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CATHLAMET 


CATHLAMET 


ON  THE 


COLUMBIA 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  THE    INDIAN    PEOPLE  AND 

SHORT    STORIES    OF    EARLY    PIONEER 

DAYS   IN   THE   VALLEY    OF   THE 

LOWER  COLUMBIA  RIVER 


BY 

THOMAS  NELSON  STRONG 


published  by 

The  Holi,y  Press,  Portland,  Oregon 

A.  D.  1906 


WITHROPOLOGt 
LIBRARY 


Copyright  1906 

BY 

Thomas  Nelson  Strong 


INTRODUCTION  AND  DEDICATION 

THE  talcs  told  in  this  little  book  came  to  the 
Avriter  in  many  ways.  Some  of  the  scenes 
described  he  saw  himself.  Indians  in  their 
lodges  and  canoes  talked  freely  to  him,  a  little 
boy.  Hudson  Bay  Factors  and  French  voy- 
ageurs  in  their  declining  years  had  many  stories 
to  tell,  and  these  were  caught  up  by  greedy 
ears.  What  is  here  told  is  but  a  little  of  the 
gatherings  of  many  years  of  wilderness  life  with 
native  hunters  and  exploring  parties  in  the 
Pacific  Northwest.  They  may  be  in  themselves 
of  little  worth,  and  yet  may  help  future  gener- 
ations of  our  children  to  better  understand  the 
life  and  atmosphere  of  a  peculiar  time,  to  better 
appreciate  the  crimson  and  the  gold,  and  may- 
hap a  little  of  the  gray  of  the  morning  hour  of 
the  white  man's  day  on  the  Pacific  Coast. 

As  my  friend,  Newman  J.  Levinson,  Sunday 
editor  of  the  Oregonian,  originally  instigated  the 
publication  of  these  tales,  and  has  given  me 
much  valuable  advice  and  assistance,  this  little 
volume  is  respectfully  dedicated  to  him  by  the 
author.  Thomas  Nelson  Strong. 


855749 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.  Cathlamet 9 

II.  The  Indian  Village 12 

III.  Indian  Men  and  Women     .     .     .     .  17 

IV.  Indian  Children  and  Boys       ...  20 
V.  The  Indian  Hunting 24 

VI.  The  Forest  Ways        29 

VII,  The  Coming  and  the  Going      ...  39 

VIII.  The  Medicine  Man 46 

IX.  The  Sweat  House 50 

X.  The  Sins  of  the  Fathers       ....  54 

XI.   The  Broken  Tribes 61 

XII.  The  White  Chiefs 66 

XIII.  Indian  Wives    . 70 

XIV.  Keeping  the  Peace 76 

XV.   Chief  Umtux 82 

XVI.  Happy  Days 94 

XVII.  The  Pioneers 99 

XVIII.  The  Pioneer  Mother 107 

XIX.  The  Red  Box         Ill 

XX.  The  End 115 


CATHLAMET 

I. 

CATHLAMET,  on  the  Columbia,  was,  from 
time  immemorial,  the  center  of  the  Indian 
strength  on  the  lower  river.  The  Indian  lin- 
gered longer  and  the  Indian  blood  is  more  con- 
spicuous there  now  than  at  any  other  place  be- 
tween Poitland  and  the  Ocean.  Chinook  was  a 
mud  beach,  a  mere  fishing  station,  but  Cathlamet 
was  an  Indian  town  before  Gray  sailed  into  the 
river  or  Lewis  and  Clark  passed  by  on  their 
way  to  the  sea.  Here  at  the  last  gathered  and 
passed  away  the  Cathlamets,  Wahkiakums, 
Chinooks  and  Coweliskies.  Here  Anderson  lived 
for  a  while,  and  here  the  Hudson  Bay  Com- 
pany, having  past  away,  came  Birnie,  Roberts 
and  Allan  and  other  old  factors  and  clerks  of 
the  company  to  end  their  days.  It  was  early 
recognized  as  an  Indian  center,  and  is  the  only 
place  of  the  Fish  Indians  to  which  Kamiakin 
condescended  to  send  his  messengers  when  he 
was  organizing  the  Indian  War  of  1855.  At 
its  l^est  it  was  the  largest  Indian  settlement  on 
the  Columbia  River  west   of    the    Cascades,  and 


10  CATHLAMET 

'''from  ihe  Indian  stories  must  have  numbered  in 
/f  'tti^  'rdwh  i:,sclf  from  500  to  1,000  people.  Like 
all  Indian  towns  it  changed  population  rapidly, 
and  when  the  whites  first  knew  it  probably  had 
300  or  400  inhabitants.  Sauvie's  Island  occa- 
sionally had  more  Indians,  but  they  were  there 
onl}^    temporarily,    digging    wapatoes. 

Queen  Sally,  of  Cathlamet,  was  the  oldest  living 
Indian  on  the  Lower  Columbia  in  the  late  fifties 
and  early  sixties,  and  her  memory  went  back 
easily  to  the  days  of  Lewis  and  Clark  when  she 
was  a  young  woman  old  enough  to  be  married, 
which,  with  the  Indians,  meant  about  fourteen 
years  old.  Seventy  years  is  extreme  old  age  for 
an  Indian,  and  especially  for  an  Indian  woman, 
but  Queen  Sally  ,was  all  of  this.  Judging  from  her 
looks  she  might  have  been  anywhere  in  the  cen- 
turies, for  never  was  a  more  wrinkled,  smoke- 
])egrimed,  wizened  old  creature.  Princess  Ange- 
line,  of  Seattle,  was  a  blooming  young  beauty 
beside  her. 

It  gave  one  a  far-away  feeling,  in  regard  to 
the  event  not  warranted  by  the  years  that  had 
passed,  when  from  the  cliffs  above  Cathlamet 
she  pointed  out  the  spot  where  the  canoes  of 
Lewis  and  Clark  were  first  seen.  She  said  the 
Indians  had  been  on  the  watch  for  them  for  sev- 
eral days,  as  news  had  come  by  Indian  post  of 


CATHLAMET  11 

the  strangers  from  the  East.  Lewis  and  Clark 
with  their  party  came  in  the  afternoon  or  even- 
ing, and  were  met  ])y  the  Indians  in  their  canoes 
at  or  a  little  above  the  modern  tow^n  of  Cath- 
lamet  and  escorted  to  the  Indian  village,  which 
was  then  on  the  slough  below  Cathlamet,  at 
about  the  point  where  the  saw  mill  now  is.  How 
long  they  stayed  here  she  could  not  clearly  tell. 
It  was  evident  she  confused  their  westward  and 
eastward  trips  and  also  their  winter  stay  at 
Clatsop  with  their  stay  at  the  Cathlamet  village. 
Twenty-five  miles  to  wandering  Indians  is  a 
bagatelle  of  too  little  importance  to  be  con- 
sidered in  fixing  a  locality.  It  was  a  time  of 
feasting,  wonderment  and  council  making. 
Lewis  and  Clark  were  doubtless  weary  of  Indians 
by  this  time,  but  the  strange  sights  they  saw 
will  never  be  seen  again. 


II. 

THE  INDIAN  VILLAGE 

npHE  village  was  made  up  of  cedar  houses, 
-^  thirty  or  forty  feet  long  and  fifteen  or 
twenty  feet  wide.  How  they  managed  to  split 
and  cut  out  the  cedar  planks,  sometimes  twenty 
and  thirty  feet  long,  two  to  three  feet  wide 
and  three  to  six  inches  thick,  of  which  these 
houses  were  l^uilt,  with  the  tools  they  had, 
is  a  mystery.  With  wedges  made  of  elkhorn 
and  chisels  made  of  Beaver  teeth,  with  flinty 
rocks  and  with  fire,  they,  in  some  way,  and 
at  a  great  expenditure  of  labor,  cut  out  the 
boards.  The  houses  were  well  built,  an  opening 
was  left  along  the  ridge  pole  for  the  smoke  to 
escape  and  there  were  cracks  in  the  w^alls,  but, 
excepting  this  and  the  door,  there  were  no  open- 
ings. LTnless  destroyed  by  fire,  these  houses 
would  stand  for  ages,  as  the  cedar  was  almost 
indestructible.  Each  house  was  fitted  to  ac- 
commodate several  families.  Along  the  sides, 
which  might  be  six  or  eight  feet  high,  and  along 
the  rear  wall  were  built  beds  like  steamer  bunks, 
one  above  the  other.     From  the  lowest  of  these 

12 


THE  INDIAN  VILLAGE  13 

bunks  the  floor  of  earth  extended  out  like  a  plat- 
form four  or  five  feet  to  a  depression  of  a  foot  or 
two  along  the  center  of  the  lodge,  which  was  re- 
served for  the  fire  place. 

Fully  inhabited  by  Indian  men,  women,  chil- 
dren and  dogs,  lighted  up  by  the  smoky  fires, 
the  lodge  interior  looked  like  a  witches'  cave. 
Men  and  women  in  all  conditions  as  to  toilet  lay 
sprawled  on  the  earth  platform  about  the  fire. 
In  the  bunks  amid  dilapidated  furs  were  num- 
berless half-naked  children  and  coyote-looking 
clogs.  Along  the  ceiling  hung  dried  salmon  and 
strings  of  dried  clams  and  roots.  The  smoke 
circled  everywhere,  and  gave  a  misty  look  of 
vastness  to  the  room,  and  through  all  like  a  solid 
atmosphere  was  the  smell,  the  awful  smell  of  the 
Indian  lodge.  Fires  in  an  Indian  village  or  an 
occasional  abandonment  Avere  recurring  necessi- 
ties in  Indian  life.  Flesh  and  blood,  even  of  the 
Indian  variety,  could  not  long  abide  in  one  Indian 
encampment.  From  this  as  well  as  from  the 
necessity  of  getting  food,  it  came  about  that  the 
Lower  River  Indian  lived  in  his  village  for  only 
small  portions  of  the  year.  It  is  safe  to  say  that 
Lewis  and  Clark  either  found  a  lodge  that  had 
been  little  used  or  slept  away  from  the  village. 
No  sane  white  man,  except  under  stress  of  dire 
necessity,  ever  slept  in  a  fully  populated  Indian 


14  CATHLAMET 

lodge  that  had  been  used  continuously  for  any 
length  of  time. 

One  of  the  strange  sights  that  Lewis  and  Clark 
saw  about  this  Wahkiakum  village  of  Cathlamet 
were  the  burial  canoes.  The  last  of  these  were 
not  destroyed  until  late  in  the  fifties,  and  when 
Lewis  and  Claz^k  came  they  were  very  numerous 
about  the  village  p.nd  in  the  Columbia  sloughs 
between  the  Elokomon  and  Skamokawa  Rivers. 
The  low,  deep  moan  of  the  Columbia  River  bar, 
forty  miles  to  the  westward,  is  clearly  heard  at 
Cathlamet,  and  it  may  be  due  to  this  that  these 
burial  canoes  placed  higli  in  the  Cottonwood  and 
Balm  of  Ciilead  trees  were  always  placed  with 
their  sharp-])ointed  prows  to  the  west.  With 
every  paddle  in  place,  with  his  robes  and  furs 
about  him  and  all  his  wealth  of  Ijeads  and  trink- 
ets at  his  feet,  the  dead  Indian  lay  in  his  war 
canoe  waiting  for  the  flood  of  life  which  should 
some  day  come  in  like  the  tide  from  the  sunset 
ocean. 

Considering  the  great  value  of  these  canoes 
and  the  time  it  took  to  l^uild  one,  it  almost 
passes  belief  that  they  would  l^e  sacrificed  to  a 
simple  belief  in  the  future  life.  It  is  exactly  as 
though  upon  the  death  of  a  multi-millionaire  of 
our  day   all   of  his   moneys,   stocks   and  bonds 


THE  INDIAN  VILLAGE  15 

should  be  buried  with  him,  his  heirs  renouncing 
the  use  of  all  his  accumulations. 

The  Chinook  canoe  of  the  lower  river  was  a 
beautiful  thing  and  was  as  much  a  home  of  the 
Indians  as  was  the  lodge.  In  Alaska  the  Indians 
had  good  canoes,  but  nothing  that  for  size,  model 
and  finish  equaled  the  Indian  canoe  of  the  Co- 
luml^ia.  These  river  canoes  were  of  all  sizes, 
from  the  one-man  hunting  canoe  that  could 
easily  be  carried,  and  which  rec[uired  an  expert 
to  handle,  to  the  large  cruising  canoe  forty  or  fifty 
feet  long  and  five  or  six  feet  wide,  which  could 
carry  thirty  or  forty  people  and  all  their  ec^uip- 
ments.  The  straight  up  and  down  lines  of  the 
stern  and  the  bewitching  curve  of  the  bow  were 
very  graceful,  and  the  water  lines  of  bow  and 
stern  have  never  been  excelled.  The  l)uild- 
ing  of  one  was  the  work  of  years.  It  was 
painfully  hollowed  out  with  fire  and  flint 
and  beaver-tooth  chisel,  was  steamed  within 
with  red-hot  rocks  and  water,  and  was 
stretched  to  exactly  the  right  proportion  and 
kept  in  place  by  stretchers  strongly  sewed  in. 
It  was  swift,  beautiful  and  seaworthy.  Its  only 
weakness  was  in  the  places  where  the  cedar  wood 
was  cut  across  the  grain  to  give  the  lines  of  bow 
and  stern.  Here  in  a  heav}^  seaway  the  canoe 
would    alwavs   work,    and   from   here   the  canoe 


16  CATHLAMET 

would  sometimes  split  from  end  to  end.  Many 
a  tragedy  of  the  sea  was  due  to  this  inherent 
weakness,  for  in  these  and  the  Alaskan  canoes 
the  Indians  traveled  the  entire  coast  line  of  the 
Pacific,  from  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  north- 
ward to  Sitka  and  southward  to  the  California 
line,  and  even  farther,  and  old  Indians  often 
told  of  clinging  to  the  broken  sides  of  the  canoe 
when  it  had  split,  for  hours,  and  even  days, 
until  the  surf  rolled  them  ashore. 


III. 

INDIAN  MEN  AND  WOMEN 

THE  Lower  River  Indians  had  no  horses  and 
no  place  to  use  them,  but  dogs  they  had 
a-plent}'.  Why  they  kept  them  except  as  sentries 
no  one  ever  knew.  They  were  miserable  creatures 
without  courage  or  hunting  instincts,  but  no  one 
could  come  within  a  hundred  yards  of  an  Indian 
lodge  without  being  discovered,  and  in  this  prob- 
ably lay  their  value  to  the  Indian,  for  they  were 
not  eaten  except  in  cases  of  necessity  or  upon 
ceremonial    occasions. 

The  Indians  in  their  canoes  were  fine-looking 
people.  Arms,  shoulders  and  backs  were  well 
muscled  and  proportioned,  and  they  handled 
their  poles  and  paddles  with  grace  and  skill,  but 
away  from  their  canoes  the  effect  was  not  so 
good.  They  almost  uniformly  had  short,  scpiatty 
legs,  sometimes  made  crooked  by  continual  scpiat- 
ting  in  the  canoes,  and  this  gave  them  a  curious- 
ly top-heavy  effect. 

Compared  with  the  Horse  Indians  of  Eastern 
Oregon  and  Washington  they  looked  weak  and 
insignificant.     They  were  not  as  wai'like  a  people 

17 


18  CATHLAMET 

as  the  Horse  Indian,  and  in  a  land  battle  would 
have  had  but  a  poor  chance.  Intellectually  they 
were  superior,  and  the  Indians  of  Eastern  Oregon 
complained  that  at  the  Cascades,  where  the  native 
peoples  met  to  trade  together,  they  were  uni- 
formly outwitted  by  their  salt-water  brethren. 
Upon  the  water  they  were  superior  also,  and  no 
Indian  of  the  plains  could  handle  a  canoe  as  the 
Salt  Water  Indian  could.  The  women  were  short, 
squatty  creatures,  with  a  tendency  to  grow  fat 
and  wrinkled  when  they  could  get  food  enough 
to  grow^  fat  on;  the  WTinkles  they  acquired  any- 
way. From  fifteen  to  twenty  the  Indian  girl  was 
a  warm-blooded  creature,  not  at  all  bad-looking, 
but  after  this  she  aged  rapidly;  at  thirty  w^as  old, 
and  at  forty  fit  only  to  tan  buckskins  and  do 
heavy  work.  In  their  native  state  very  few  of 
them  lived  much  beyond  fifty.  The  treatment  of 
them  by  the  Indian  men  was  brutal  to  a  degree 
that  white  women  can  hardly  realize.  Neverthe- 
less they  had  a  great  deal  of  influence,  and  while 
an  Indian  in  a  fit  of  bad  temper  might  in  the 
evening  knock  down  his  tired  squaw^  and  leave 
her  lying  in  the  ashes  by  the  fire,  the  next  morn- 
ing she  would  be  his  mistress  of  the  household 
as  usual.  It  was  astonishing  what  good  women 
the  native  women  were,  and  how  patiently  and 
honestly  they  toiled  and  suffered  for  their  worth- 


INDIAN  MEN  AND  WOMEN  19 

less  husbands.  Afterwards  when  the  white  men 
came,  the  chance  to  marry  one  of  the  King  George 
men  or  Bostons  was  to  an  Indian  woman  a  chance 
to  enter  paradise.  No  white  husl^and  was  ever 
as  bad  as  an  Indian,  and  however  drunken  and 
worthless  the  white  man  might  be  considered 
to  be  b}"  his  own  people,  he  was  a  marvel  of 
husbandly  virtues  in  the  eyes  of  his  native  wife. 
His  word  was  law,  and  to  him  she  was  faithful 
to  the  death.  Long  centuries  of  oppression 
made  the  Indian  woman  thankful  for  even  a  poor 
specimen  of  a  man.  Thrice  happy  was  her  lot 
when  she  was  taken  for  wife  by  a  decent  white 
man.  In  her  inarticulate  way  she  greatly  re- 
joiced and  sacrificed  herself  for  him  gladly. 
There  are  many  people  in  Oregon  and  Wash- 
ington who  have  Indian  blood  in  their  veins, 
and  few,  very  few,  of  them  have  ever  had  reason 
to  blush  for  their  Indian  mothers. 


IV. 

INDIAN  CHILDREN  AND  BOYS 

rriHE  children  that  Lewis  and  Clark  saw  on  the 
-^  lower  river  were  odd-looking  creatures. 
The  babies  were  strapped  to  boards  and  looked 
like  miniature  mummies  of  Egyptian  times,  but 
the  older  ones  were  ceaselessly  active.  They  were 
little  brown  fellows  with  slender  legs  that  upheld 
and  rapidly  carried  about  a  protuberant  stom- 
ach, apparently  four  sizes  too  large  for  the  legs 
below  and  the  head  above.  It  is  astonishing  how 
much  they  looked  like  the  pictures  of  Brownies 
in  our  children's  picture-books.  Amongst  them 
the  rate  of  mortality  was  high,  and  they  grew 
up  with  the  dogs  as  best  they  could;  were  fed, 
and  in  a  fashion  clothed  and  sheltered,  and  that 
was  all.  As  soon  as  the  little  Indian  could  run 
about  he  commenced  to  hunt  and  fish,  and  in 
mere  love  of  slaughter  would  frequent  the  streams 
and  maim  and  kill  the  salmon  coming  up  to 
spawn.  The  little  creek  by  Cathlamet  was  a 
favorite  stream  of  the  Fall  salmon,  and  here  the 

20 


INDIAN  CHILDREN  AND  BOYS  21 

little  Indians  would  gather  and  spear  fish  until 
they  were  weary  of  the  sport,  and  would  then 
in  mere  wantonness  throw  their  captures  on  the 
rocks  to  spoil.  At  thirteen  and  fourteen  the 
boys  would  begin  seriously  to  hunt  for  game. 
The  old  Queen  Anne  muskets  that  they  had  in 
early  days  would  be  carefully  loaded,  not  a  grain 
of  powder  or  a  single  shot  would  be  wasted,  for 
these  commodities  in  the  earlv  davs  were  diffi- 
cult  to  obtain.  In  his  little  one-man  canoe  the 
youth  would  silently  paddle  through  the  sloughs 
looking  for  clucks  and  geese,  of  which  there  were 
countless  thousands.  He  never  attempted  to 
shoot  on  the  wing,  and  would  rarely  fire  at  a  single 
bird,  but  would  maneuver  for  hours  to  get  a 
chance  to  fire  into  a  sitting  flock  at  short  range. 

As  the  great  flocks  of  wild  fowl  had  then,  as 
they  have  now,  a  most  exasperating  habit  of 
lying  in  open  water  beyond  gun  shot,  a  favorite 
device  with  the  Indian  was  to  cover  his  canoe  with 
green  boughs  so  that  it  would  appear  to  be  a 
mere  floating  heap  of  brush  wood,  and  lying  in 
ambush  under  this  the  hunter  would  patiently 
wait  for  hours  for  the  birds  to  come  near  or  for 
a  favoring  wind  to  float  him  into  their  midst. 
An   Indian  enjoyed  killing  ducks   and  geese  in 


22  CATHLAMET 

this  way.  The  stealthiness  and  the  ease  of  it, 
both  appealed  to  him,  besides  it  meant  many 
birds  for  one  shot. 

So  strongly  was  the  necessity  for  economy  in 
powder  and  shot  impressed  upon  them  that  a 
young  Indian  about  fourteen  years  old,  seeing  one 
day  a  large  cougar  about  to  cross  a  stream  on  a 
log  did  not  fire  at  him  from  the  canoe,  but  crept 
ashore  and  h^d  himself  at  the  end  of  the  log 
until  the  cougar  nearly  touched  the  end  of  his 
gun,  when  he  fired,  and,  in  the  words  of  Western 
Ike,  "Bio wed  a  hole  in  that  cougar  that  a  bull 
bat  could  a'  flew  through  without  teching  his 
wings  on  either  side."  Spoken  to  about  the  risk 
he  had  taken  the  youngster  said  he  couldn't  afford 
to  waste  a  load  of  shot,  and  had  to  make  sure 
work.  These  old  guns  missed  fire  very  frequent- 
ly, and  the  little  Indian's  economy  might  have 
cost  him  dear,  but  to  his  mind  life  was  about 
the  cheapest  of  his  possessions;  it  had  never 
cost  him  anj^thing.  For  large  game  shooting 
they  would  freciuently  make  a  slug  for  their 
muskets  by  whittling  out  a  wooden  plug  the 
size  of  the  interior  of  the  gun  barrel,  and  with 
this  make  a  mold  in  damp  sand,  into  which  was 
poured  the  melted  lead.     The  result  was  a  fearful 


INDIAN  CHILDREN  AND  BOYS  23 

missile.  It  would  not  go  straight  for  forty  yards, 
but  as  it  was  never  fired  at  such  a  great  distance 
this  made  no  difference,  for  by  lying  in  wait  or 
careful  stalking  the  Indian  would  get  so  close 
in  to  his  game  that  a  miss  was  impossible.  A 
bear  slain  in  this  way  looked  after  his  decease 
as  if  he  had  been  hit  by  a  section  of  Mount 
Hood  in  some  ''Battle  of  the  Gods." 


V. 

THE  INDIAN  HUNTING 

OPPOSITE  Cathlamet  is  Puget  Island, 
named  by  Vancouver's  exploring  party  on 
its  first  trip  up  the  Columbia,  in  1792,  and  here 
the  Indians  hunted  the  deer  in  the  low,  marshy 
lands  along  the  sloughs.  In  the  early  times, 
before  they  used  guns,  the  bow  and  arrow  were 
sometimes  used,  but  generally  the  hunts  were 
elaborate  affairs  and  long  lines  of  skirmishers 
drove  the  frightened  deer  into  inclosures  or 
pitfalls,  but  after  the  traders  came  with  guns  and 
gunpowder,  the  same  wary  tactics  and  careful 
stalking  were  employed  in  deer  hunting  as  in 
the  pursuit  of  other  wild  game. 

Across  the  river,  beyond  its  two  channels  and 
Puget  Island,  was  high  land  again,  and  here  is 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  pieces  of  forest  and 
one  of  the  most  striking  slopes  in  all  of  the  Coast 
Mountains.  Commencing  at  Cathlamet  Head, 
the  unbroken  slope  sweeps  easterly  to  a  point 
back  of  Westport,  and  between  it  and  the  Ne- 
halem  River,  for  miles,  the  hunter  travels  in  a 
great  fir  forest  and  up  a  gentle  slope  until  he 


THE  INDIAN  HUNTING  25 

reaches  an  elevation  of  about  three  thousand  feet, 
and  sees  the  Columbia  River  to  the  north  and 
east,  the  Nehalem  River  to  the  south  and  the 
Pacific  Ocean  to  the  west.  Looking  at  it  across 
the  river  from  the  hill  in  Cathlamet  by  the  Birnie 
house,  the  sweeping  outline  of  this  long  slope 
presents  one  of  the  most  graceful  and  impressive 
scenes  on  the  Lower  Columbia. 

Here  Wholiky  and  Scarborough  and  all  the 
mighty  hunters  of  the  Lower  Columbia  hunted 
the  elk  and  the  bear  and  the  long  aisles  of  those 
magnificent  woods  have  seen  stirring  sights. 
To  watch  one  of  these  thorough  hunters  track  an 
elk  was  always  a  fresh  delight.  For  hours  he 
would  go  uphill  and  down  and  out  and  in,  in  de- 
vious wanderings.  Here  a  little  twig  misplaced 
or  a  leaf  pressed  down,  signs  too  faint  for  the 
inexperienced  to  even  notice,  would  tell  him 
when  and  wdiere  the  great  beast  had  passed. 
No  bloodhound  ever  follow^ed  the  track  more 
persistently.  After  hours,  perhaps,  of  this  kind 
of  work,  the  signs  would  grow  clearer  and  easier 
to  follow,  and  the  hunter's  eyes  would  grow 
keen  and  hot,  step  by  step  he  would  increase 
his  speed,  and  piece  by  piece  he  would  drop  his 
wrappings  and  clothes.  It  was  said  of  Indian 
Dick  that  he  rarely  had  any  clothes,  to  speak  of, 
on   at    the   death,   and   yet  so    perfect   was    his 


26  CATHLAMET 

woodland  instinct  that  he  would  afterwards 
retrace  his  tracks  for  miles  and  gather  up  every 
article. 

It  almost  seemed  as  if  the  hunter  had  the 
sense  of  smell  possessed  by  hunting  dogs,  but 
the  Indians  disclaimed  this  capacity  and  to  their 
familiar  hunting  friends  talked  freely  about  the 
way  they  found  the  trail.  One  thing  that  helped 
them  was  that  they  were  familiar  with  the  ground 
and  knew  the  runways  and  habits  of  the  animals 
and  could  very  nearly  guess  where  any  particu- 
lar one  was  bound. 

Where  an  elk  had  been  feeding  it  was  very 
difficult  to  follow  him,  and  sometimes  the  Indian 
would  make  a  short  cut  to  find  out  where  he  had 
left  his  feeding  grounds,  and  this  made  it  occa- 
sionally necessary  to  look  up  the  back  track,  but 
ordinarily  it  was  a  straight-awa}^  stalk  for  miles 
through  the  brush  and  heav}^  timber,  and  the 
hunter  generally  followed  in  the  exact  trail  of 
the   animal. 

At  the  beginning  of  a  chase  an  Indian  hunter 
like  Wholiky  or  Indian  Dick  would  often  ven- 
ture a  prediction  as  to  where  the  chase  would 
end.  "We  catch  him  on  Rocky  Hill  little  way 
over  there,"  or  "on  little  creek,''  or  elsewhere, 
and  usually  there  was  where  he  was   found. 

On  ordinary  ground  the  track  could  be  readily 


THE  INDIAN  HUNTING  27 

followed  and  on  hard  rocky  soil  there  was  always 
enough  dust  or  vegetation  to  retain  some  trace 
of  the  passage  of  so  heavy  an  animal  as  a  deer, 
elk  or  bear;  a  dislodged  pebble,  a  turned  leaf  or 
a  crushed  blade  of  grass  w^as  enough.  The  mar- 
velous thing  about  it  was  the  quickness  and  ac- 
curacy with  which  these  slight  signs  would  be 
seen  and  interpreted.  A  white  hunter  follow- 
ing his  Indian  friend  had  plenty  of  time  to  watch 
the  process,  and  it  was  as  interesting  as  the 
working  out  of  a  great  puzzle.  To  an  ordinary 
w^hite  man  who  knew  little  of  the  woods  or  of 
hunting,  it  was  magic  pure  and  simple. 

The  closing  in  of  the  native  hunter  on  his  game 
was  a  stirring  thing  to  watch.  Long  centuries 
of  hunting  with  bows  and  arrows,  feeble,  short- 
range  weapons,  had  bred  into  the  Indian  the 
habit  of  getting  close  up,  and  his  having  a  gun 
made  no  difference  with  his  habit. 

Carrying  his  body  low^  crouched  so  that  it 
seemed  to  glide  along  the  ground  like  a  snake, 
placing  each  step  with  noiseless  certainty  and 
going  through  the  underbrush  as  quietly  as  a 
fish  in  water,  the  stealthy  panther-like  quality 
of  the  Indian  here  showed  at  its  best,  for,  close 
to  his  prey,  fairly  vibrating  with  tense  and  sub- 
dued energy,  the  Indian  of  the  chase  was  a  very 


28  CATHLAMET 

different  looking  creature  from  the  Indian  of  the 
lodge. 

On  one  occasion  Indian  Wholiky  in  the  wood 
and  heavy  underbrush  of  the  Xehalem  Moun- 
tains crept  up  so  close  to  a  black  bear  that  only 
the  thickness  of  a  tree  separated  them.  Poor 
bruin  was  astonished  and  dead  in  the  same  mo- 
ment. The  black  bear  in  his  chosen  habitat  of 
thick  brush  is  one  of  the  most  unapproachable 
of  animals  by  stalking,  and  poor  bruin  had  a  right 
to  be  astonished. 


Vl. 

THE  FOREST  WAYS 

FEW  people  appreciate  how  different  the 
forest  home  of  the  Indians  of  the  Lower 
Columbia  was  from  the  habitat  of  other  Indian 
peoples  and  what  effect  this  had  upon  them. 
Cathlamet  was  situated  on  the  bank  of  the 
Columbia  River  and  was  in  a  mere  notch  cut 
out  of  one  of  the  most  remarkable  forests  in 
the  world. 

To  the  North,  East,  South  and  West  for  hun- 
dreds of  miles  the  Douglas  fir,  now  called  in  the 
trade  by  the  commonplace  name  of  Oregon  pine, 
covered  the  earth  with  a  green  mantle  two  to 
three  hundred  feet  in  thickness. 

The  growth  of  one  of  these  forests  was  as  good 
an  example  of  the  opulence  of  nature  as  could 
anywhere  be  found.  Over  the  bare  ground 
caused  by  a  burn  or  windfall  thousands  of  the 
cones  of  the  fir  tree  would  be  scattered  from 
the  adjoining  forest.  Chattering  pine  squirrels 
and  birds  and  the  winds  would  carry  the  seeds. 
The  next  year  the  ground  would  be  green  with 
tiny  trees,  little  fairy  things  of  which  there  might 

29 


30  CATHLAMET 

be  dozens  to  every  square  yard.  In  four  or  five 
years  the  ground  would  still  be  green,  but  the 
carpet  of  verdure  would  be  perhaps  six  or  seven 
feet  deep,  and  of  the  little  tiny  trees  perhaps 
nineteen  out  of  twent}^  would  have  been  crowded 
to  death,  and  so  dense  would  be  the  surface  of 
this  green  carpet  that  the  lower  limbs  of  the  little 
trees,  and  many  of  the  little  trees  themselves, 
shut  out  from  all  light,  would  be  dying  and  fall- 
ing away.  For  two  hundred  years  the  process 
would  go  on,  each  young  tree  vigorously  reaching 
upward  to  keep  its  head  in  the  sunshine  but 
making  no  attempt  to  reach  out  sideways,  for 
this  was  hopeless.  Only  the  stronger  trees 
survived  the  struggle  and  thousands  died  each 
year  shut  out  from  light  and  life  by  their 
stronger  brothers.  The  lower  branches  dropped 
off  farther  up  every  year  as  the  green  pile  of 
the  fir  carpet  was  lifted  higher  and  higher  on  the 
vigorous  young  stems.  In  perhaps  fifty  or  a 
hundred  years  from  the  time  the  seed  dropped 
on  the  ground  there  would  be  a  compact  young 
forest  of  beautiful  timber  fit  for  the  masts  and 
spars  of  ships,  each  tree  eighteen  or  twenty-four 
inches  through  at  the  ground,  going  straight  up 
into  the  air  a  beautiful  straight  shaft  of  nearly 
the  same  size  a  hundred  feet  without  a  branch 
or    leaf,    and    then    for    fifty    or   one    hundred 


THE  FOREST  WAYS  31 

feet  tapering  to  the  top  and  leafing  out  into 
the  sunshine.  When  the  forest  was  fully  grown 
this  green  mass  of  leafage  would  be  two  or 
three  hundred  feet  from  the  ground.  Looked 
at  from  above,  from  the  top  of  some  high  hill, 
for  instance,  this  continuous  forest  appeared 
like  a  great  green  carpet  spread  evenly  over  a 
great  sea  of  mountains,  and  it  extended  over 
hill  and  valley  for  thousands  of  square  miles 
along  the  Pacific  Ocean.  Looked  at  from  be- 
neath the  forest  vistas  looked  like  the  groined 
aisles  of  some  great  cathedral  with  sweeping 
lengths  to  be  measured  by  miles  instead  of  feet. 
Since  the  coming  of  the  white  man  uncounted 
millions  of  feet  of  luml3er  have  been  cut  from 
this  forest  and  fires  have  in  places  ravaged  it 
and  yet  so  immense  is  its  extent  and  so  vigorous 
is  it  power  of  renewal  that  it  is  today  to  the  casual 
sightseer  the  same  unbroken  forest  that  it  has 
been    from    the    beginning. 

This  was  the  home  and  the  hunting  ground 
of  the  Indian  of  the  Lower  Columbia.  Some 
parts  of  it  he  knew. well  but  into  other  parts  he 
would  not  go,  and  it  was  curious  to  see  how  the 
places  Avhere  game  and  food  were  plentiful  be- 
came familiar  ground  wdiile  the  other  places 
were  invested  with  superstitious  terrors.  Along 
the  rivers  where    canoes    could  go  the  Indian 


32  CATHLAMET 

was  at  home,  and  along  some  of  the  prairies  and 
smaller  streams  of  the  Willamette  Valle}^,  Indian 
villages  and  homes  were  established,  but  the 
forest  itself  was  untouched  and  except  where  it 
was  hunted  in  was  unknown  and  feared. 

Thunder  storms  are  of  rare  occurrence  in  the 
Valley  of  the  Columbia  and  hence  the  Indians 
were  very  much  impressed  by  them  when  they 
did  occur. 

Jim  Crow  Mountain,  near  Brookfield,  was  a 
rough  piece  of  country  in  which  the  hunting 
was  poor.  It  was  "Mesatchie  Illihee,"  and 
so  in  time  the  Indians  connected  together 
what  they  thought  was  cause  and  effect. 
Jim  Crow  ^Mountain  obtained  the  reputation  of 
being  a  thunder  blasted  district  and  as 
being  the  chosen  resting  place  of  the  gigantic 
Thunder  Bird  who  so  terrified  the  poor  Indians 
with  the  flashings  of  its  eyes  and  the  roll  and 
thunder  of  its  dark  wings. 

A  part  of  the  Upper  Valley  of  the  Wenatchee 
above  the  lake  had  also  the  reputation  amongst 
the  Indians  of  the  neighborhood  of  being  ''Mesat- 
chie Illihee"  and  of  being  the  haunt  of  evil  spirits. 
The  first  surveying  party  of  the  whites  that 
went  through  identified  the  evil  spirits  in  clouds 
of  mosc{uitoes,  which  at  times  made  the  place 
uninhabitable  by  either  men  or  game.     ''Mesat- 


THE  FOREST  WAYS  33 

chie  Illihee''  meant  only  rough,  bad  or  difficult 
country,  but  Indian  ghosts  and  hobgoblins 
seemed  to  like  this  kind  of  countr}^,  for  they 
were  always  located  in  it  by  the  Indian  story 
tellers. 

The  forest  was  so  vast  that  the  multitude  of 
animals  and  birds  that  roamed  through  and 
lived  in  it  were  completely  out  of  sight,  and  it 
w^as  c{uite  a  common  experience  for  the  early 
explorers  and  surveyors  to  travel  through  it  for 
weary  days  without  seeing  more  than  a  pine 
marten  or  a  chattering  squirrel.  Lewis  and  Clark 
in  their  expedition  followed  the  rivers  and  this 
and  good  fortune  and  judgment  was  all  that 
saved  the  party  from  disaster,  for  hunters  well 
equipped  but  unacquainted  with  the  woods,  have 
starved  in  these  great  forests. 

The  Indians  tried  no  experiments  and  unless 
compelled  wandered  into  no  unknown  country, 
and  the  old  Indian  trails  on  the  Lower  Columbia 
were  few  in  number.  There  was  a  w^ell  known 
w^ay  for  Indians  and  Indian  canoes  from  Chinook 
River  to  the  Naselle  and  thence  to  Shoalwater 
Bay  and  another  from  Shoalwater  Bay  to  Grays 
Harbor.  There  w^as  an  Indian  trail  from  the 
waters  of  the  Cowlitz  River  to  Puget  Sound  and 
another  around  the  Cascades  of  the  Columbia; 
and  in  the  Willamette  Valley,  owing  to  its  more 


34  CATHLAMET 

open  character  horses  were  used  and  there  were 
many  trails  to  different  points. 

The  trails  used  by  Indians  who  did  not 
use  horses  were  always  made  b}^  the  tramping 
of  feet  and  were  never  cut  out  or  graded  in  any 
way.  They  nearly  always  went  up  the  sharp 
points  of  the  hills  and  along  the  sharp  backbones 
of  the  ridges,  and  this  was  done  to  avoid  fallen 
timber 

Thirty-five  years  ago  a  young  hunter  was 
searching  for  deer  in  the  little  range  of 
mountains  between  the  Willamette  Slough  and 
the  Tualitin  Plains.  It  was  an  idle,  easy  hunting, 
more  for  the  love  of  wandering  than  for  the  desire 
of  killing,  and  in  the  Summer  evening  he  sat 
down  to  rest  and  look  around.  Something 
peculiar  about  a  vista  in  the  woods  attracted 
his  attention  and  he  observed  it  closely.  Appar- 
ently an  old  trail,  it  tempted  him  to  wander 
along  it.  For  miles  it  kept  its  course  and  soon 
it  was  clear  that  here  was  the  old  Indian  trail 
from  the  Tualitin  Plains  to  the  Columbia  River 
at  Sauvie's  Island.  Overgrown  with  moss, 
covered  with  leaves  and  mold,  it  Avas  still  the 
old  trail  that  in  olden  times  had  been  trodden 
by  thousands  of  moccasined  feet.  There  were 
no  choppings  or  blazed  trees  along  it,  and  even 
the  roots  of  the  trees  rounded  and  rubbed  by 


THE  FOREST  WAYS  35 

the  clinging  clasp  of  soft,  flexible  feet  showed 
plainly  that  they  had  not  been  trodden  or  marred 
by  the  heavy  foot-gear  of  the  white  man.  Every 
foot  of  the  location  and  every  sinuous  turn  of 
the  old  highway  bespoke  its  origin  and  use.  It 
was  the  old  and  fading  signature  of  a  dead 
people.  So  dim  and  spectral  and  yet  so  un- 
mistakable, it  w^as  the  rising  of  an  Indian   ghost. 

Following  along  the  shadowy  trail,  he  reached 
the  summit,  from  where  he  saw  before  him  the 
valley  of  the  Lower  Columbia.  The  mountains 
to  the  Eastward,  the  great  river  in  the  foreground, 
the  Willamette  Valley  stretching  to  the  South- 
ward and  many  miles  of  river  and  forest  lighted 
up  by  the  evening  sunlight. 

As  the  evening  deepened  the  young  hunter 
could  by  a  very  easy  stretch  of  the  imagination 
see  along  the  path  lines  of  bent  Indian  squaws, 
each  carrying  on  her  back  by  a  strap  about  her 
forehead  a  heavy  load,  and  some,  too,  little 
babies  in  their  funny  little  bound-up  packing- 
cases,  and  trooping  merrily  at  their  heels,  the 
little  elf-like,  copper-colored  children  and  the 
w^olfish  dogs,  and  occasionally  with  these,  and 
yet  apart  as  became  his  dignity,  an  Indian  warrior 
foot-loose    and    comfortable. 

It  w^as  a  long  procession  and  it  had  passed 
and  repassed  that  way  for  hundreds  of  years, 


36  CATHLAMET 

and  now  only  the  trail  was  left,  but  the  trail 
told  many  things  to  any  one  who  could  see. 

To  understand  the  Indian  migration  you 
must  know  what  they  are  traveling  for,  because 
the  Indian  life  was  spent  in  traveling.  In  this 
case  apparently  these  Indians  had  not  traveled 
this  road  for  war  or  sight-seeing  or  pleasure. 
It  had  only  been  the  old  quest  of  food. 

Immediately  below  the  sightseer  from  this 
point  lies  Sauvie's  Island,  stretching  for  fifteen  or 
twenty  miles  down  the  Columbia  River,  and  this 
island,  famous  in  the  old  history  of  the  Hudson 
Bay  Company  and  of  the  pioneers,  was  a  garden 
of  the  wapato,  the  Indian  potato.  The  lakes 
and  overflowed  lands  were  green  with  its  arrow- 
sha])ed  leaves,  and  here  every  Autumn  the 
Indians  used  to  gather  for  the  purpose  of 
harA'esting  it,  and  the  stores  so  obtained  helped 
them  through  the  Winter.  On  the  river  was 
also  the  gathering  place  for  drying  and  smoking 
salmon.  The  Cascades  on  the  Columbia  and 
the  Falls  of  the  Willamette  at  Oregon  City  were 
great  gathering  places  in  the  salmon  season,  but 
there  were  plenty  of  other  streams  where  the 
salmon  could  be  caught.  It  was  preserved  by 
dr3ang  and  smoking,  and  from  an  Indian  encamp- 
ment in  the  olden  time  an  odor  used  to  float 
down  the  wind  that  was  so  pungent  and  charac- 


THE  FOREST  WAYS  37 

teristic  that  it  could  almost  be  seen.  No  real 
and  truly  pioneer  who  ever  lived  near  the  Indians 
can  to  this  day  catch  the  slightest  whiff  of  ancient 
fish  without  seeing  in  fancy  the  Indian  lodges. 
The  Indians  near  the  Coast  made  trips  to  the 
ocean  for  the  native  cranberry  and  for  clams. 
These  later  were  dried  and  smoked  and  so 
cured,  with  an  al^undant  sprinkling  of  sand, 
were  probably  the  most  indestructible  food 
known. 

Along  or  near  the  Coast  were  also  the 
favorite  hunting  grounds  for  elk.  The  meat 
of  the  elk  and  deer  was  cut  in  strips  and  dried 
over  the  fire,  making  what  was  known  as  jerked 
meat.  Farther  up  the  river  the  sweet  glutinous 
root  of  the  camas  was  dried  and  packed  for 
Winter    food. 

The  black  bear  is  a  cunning  berry  eater, 
and  there  is  no  more  curious  woodland  sight 
than  that  of  a  big  black  bear  sitting  upon  his 
haunches  drawing  down  huckleberry  bushes  and 
picking  off  the  tiny  berries  one  by  one,  but  even 
the  black  bear  is  a  dullard  in  gathering  berries 
compared  with  the  Indian  women.  They  knew 
every  berry  bush  and  patch  anywhere  within 
reaching  distance  and  knew  just  how  and  when 
to  gather  them  and  Olallies  (berries)  formed  a 
great  part  of  the  Indian  food  supply. 


38  CATHLAMET 

To  the  people  who  knew  it  the  forest  was  a 
magnificent  granary  of  food,  and  perhaps  one  of 
the  most  pitiful  stories  of  the  West  is  that  of  a 
party  of  Eastern  men  fleeing  panic-stricken  from 
anticipated  starvation,  leaving  their  comrades  to 
die  b}^  the  way,  because  a  little  snow  flurry  and 
a  little  hunger  met  them  in  the  woods.  The 
mountains  and  the  great  forest  were  strange 
and  terrifying  to  them.  Had  they  been  Indians 
or  Western  and  forest-trained  men  they  would 
have  come  out  at  their  leisure,  hungry  and  thin, 
half  starved  and  hollow  down  to  their  boots, 
perhaps,  but  still  all  together. 

So  far  as  Indian  tradition  goes  there  was 
never  any  famine  amongst  the  native  tribes  of 
the  Lower  Columbia.  When  Azrael  took  his 
chosen  from  amongst  these  Indians  to  the 
Happy  Hunting  Grounds  he  walked  with  them 
along  other  death-trails  than  the  dreary  one  of 
starvation. 


VII. 

THE  COMING  AND  THE  GOING 

WHERE  did  the  Indian  of  the  Columbia 
River  come  from? 
Crab  Creek,  on  the  great  plain  of  the  Columbia, 
in  Eastern  Washington,  is  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  streams  in  the  Northwest.  At  its 
source  near  Medical  Lake  it  is  a  mere  brook, 
and  here  in  1870  there  were  trout,  little  finger- 
lings,  by  the  hundreds.  A  few  miles  to  the 
Westward  the  stream  disappeared  in  sand  and 
basaltic  rock.  Again  a  few  miles  below  it  came 
to  the  surface  a  larger  stream  than  at  first,  and 
with  larger  trout.  For  100  miles  Avent  this 
peculiar  stream  in  this  way,  now  sinking  and 
now  rising,  every  reach  of  open  water  stocked 
with  trout  of  appropriate  size,  until  a  little 
below  Moses  Lake,  •  south  of  the  Grand  Coulee 
and  20  or  30  miles  from  the  Columbia  River, 
it  finally  disappeared  in  a  waste  of  sand  and 
rock.  Thirty  years  ago  in  its  lower  reaches 
fat  half-pound  trout  went  in  schools,  and  as 
the  engineers  of  the  Northern  Pacific  Railroad 
passed  by  they  had  much  argument  as  to  how 


40  CATHLAMET 

the  trout  got  there,  and  as  to  how  the  right- 
sized  fish  got  in  the  right-sized  streams.  But 
the  question  is  still  unsolved.  In  some  such 
fashion  men  speculate  upon  the  origin  of  the 
Pacific  Coast  aborigines.  How  came  this  people 
to  be  scattered  along  the  coast  and  in  the  interior, 
each  one  in  his  proper  habitat,  and  who  were 
the  Adam  and  Eve  of  the  Chinooks  and  Cath- 
lamets?  It  is  an  endless  subject,  for  they  were 
apparently  a  people  to  themselves  and  resembled 
no  others,  and  perhaps  the  answer  of  Chief 
Moses,  of  the  Wenatchees,  is  as  good  as  any. 
Riding  by  this  self-same  Crab  Creek  in  leisurely 
fashion  one  Summer  day,  he  was  asked  liow  the 
trout  got  in.  With  an  indulgent  smile  for  the 
youthful  ignorance  that  prompted  such  a  ques- 
tion, the  old  chief  answered:  ''Mika  ticka  cumtux 
caqua  ucook  tenas  salmon  chawco  copa  tenas 
chuck?  Na,  na,  chawco,  nesica  tillicum  be  nesika 
cumtux  yaca  quansum  mitlite.'^  (You  want 
to  know  how  the  little  salmon  got  into  the  little 
creek?  No,  no,  they  didn't  get  in.  My  people 
know,  and  I  know,  that  they  have  always  been 
there.) 

Another  curious  question  has  to  do  with 
the  scanty  native  population  of  Western  Oregon 
and  Washington  when  first  known  by  the  white 
men.      The   range   was   limitless   and   food   was 


THE  COMING  AND  THE  GOING  41 

abundant  beyond  measure.  The  country  could 
have  supported  easily  five  times  the  number 
of  native  people  that  were  on  it.  These  Indians 
always  claimed  that  they  were  once  a  populous 
and  powerful  people,  but  that  in  some  way  they 
had  provoked  the  Divine  anger  and  been  de- 
stroyed, and  this  claim  is  undoul^tedly  based 
upon  fact,  and  on  this  question,  although  there 
are  uncertainties  regarding  the  manner  of  the 
decimation  of  the  Indians  of  the  Willamette 
and  Lower  Columbia  Rivers,  we  have  something 
definite  to  go  on.  This  decimation  began 
before  the  first  white  settlers  came,  and  was 
largely  finished  before  1830.  None  of  the 
histories  give  any  idea  of  the  number  of  Indians 
who  inhabited  this  region  before  historic  times, 
and  this  can  only  be  conjectured,  but  it  is  certain 
that  once  a  commensurate  Indian  population 
filled  Western  Oregon  from  the  Cascade  Moun- 
tains to  the  Pacific  Ocean.  Every  aged  Indian 
told  stories  of  a  time  when  the  rivers  were  lined 
with  villages  and  floated  many  canoes.  At 
Marr's  Landing,  about  three  miles  below  Castle 
Rock,  on  the  Columbia,  the  river  has  in  the 
last  few  years  been  washing  away  what  is  known 
as  the  island,  and  has  uncovered  the  site  of  old 
Indian  camp  fires.  These  stretch  in  a  long 
line  up  and  down  the  beach.     They  are  covered 


42  CATHLAMET 

with  two  or  three  feet  of  loam,  and  on  this  fir 
trees  a  hundred  years  old  have  grown.  As 
many  as  fifteen  or  twenty  stone  hammers  have 
been  found  about  a  single  fireplace,  and  the  old 
charred  fires  are  preserved  as  they  were  200 
years  ago.  One  pathetic  little  relic  found 
amongst  the  big  stone  hammers  was  a  tiny  little 
hammer  and  pestle,  evidently  playthings  of  an 
Indian  child.  On  Archer  Mountaiii,  a  mile  or 
two  west,  are  what  appear  to  be  ancient  fortifica- 
tions that  would  have  required  many  warriors  to 
man.  No  village  of  this  magnitude  was  known 
there  by  white  men.  In  the  day  of  Lewis  and 
Clark  there  was  only  a  scattering  settlement 
near  Castle  Rock,  and  a  migratory  trading  band 
at  the  Cascades.  The  Indian  flint  factory  at 
the  Clackamas  River  suggests  a  large  population, 
and  Cathlamet  was  always  a  greater  city  of 
the  dead  than  of  the  living.  Between  the 
Elokomon  and  the  Skamokawa  the  sloughs 
were  lined  with  the  burial  canoes  of  the  dead, 
and  as  only  distinguished  men  were  so  l^uried, 
this  stood  for  a  large  population,  probably  greater 
than  that  of  the  Bella-Bella  Indian  Village  in 
British  Columbia.  These  canoe  burials  were 
ancient.  Cedar  wood  is  almost  indestructible, 
and  no  living  Indians  knew  the  name  or  lineage 
of   the   dead   or   resented   the   resurrection   that 


THE  COMING  AND  THE  GOING  43 

the  white  children  accomplished  in  searching 
for  Indian  ornaments.  They  tumbled  the 
bones  out  of  the  bed  of  loam  and  leaves  that 
had  gathered  over  them,  and  they  were  the 
bones  of  a  hundred  years  gone.  In  sport  the 
children  put  them  together  and  speculated 
upon  what  manner  of  men  they  w^ere,  and  the 
Indian  children  joined  in  the  game,  for  the  dead 
were  the  old,  old  people.  Below  the  Indian 
village  the  ground  was  black  and  the  plough 
turned  up  countless  skulls  and  l^ones  with  flints 
and  Indian  arrowheads,  bespeaking  long  occu- 
pation and  a  numerous  population.  Long  be- 
fore 1800  the  Indian  had  evidently  reached  the 
height  of  his  power  and  prosperity,  and  when 
the  white  man  came  was  already  on  the  way  to 
extinction. 

The  waning  of  the  Indian  power  of  the  Lower 
Columbia  is  shrouded  in  mystery.  Young  Indian 
girls  told  the  story  of  it  in  hushed  w^hispers, 
and  the  old  Indians  spoke  of  it  reluctantly. 
Had  the  Death  Angel  come  in  bodily  form  they 
could  not  have  been  more  impressed.  The 
wail  for  the  dead,  so  they  said,  was  heard  all 
along  the  rivers,  and  no  one  even  hoped  for 
life  when  the  slaughter  was  on.  The  Indians 
named  the  chief  instrument  of  destruction  the 
''Cole   sick.''     With   the   white    man    came   the 


44  CATHLAMET 

smallpox  and  the  measles,  but  the  "Cole  sick" 
was  neither  of  these.  About  1820  and  1830 
epidemics  of  the  old  disease  swept  among  the 
remaining  Indians,  and  historians  are  puzzled 
to  give  it  a  name.  One  suggests  that  fever  and 
ague  came  with  the  settlers,  but  the  Valley  of 
the  Columbia  was  never  a  fever  and  ague  coun- 
try and  the  pioneers,  how^ever  malaria  stricken 
at  the  beginning,'  must  have  been  thoroughly 
disinfected  by  their  long  trip  across  the  plains. 
Others  say  that  the  turning  up  of  the  soil  by 
the  Hudson's  Bay  people  at  the  farms  at  Fort 
Vancouver  released  malaria  from  the  soil  and 
this  caused  the  epidemic,  but  the  disease  was 
here  before  the  farms,  and  it  was  impossible 
that  a  disease  which  raged  over  hundreds  of 
square  miles  could  have  come  from  so  trivial 
a  cause.  It  may  have  been  the  modern  la  grippe 
striking  an  unprotected  people.  Whatever  it 
was  no  more  potent  angel  of  death  ever  visited 
an    afflicted    people. 

The  white  man  had  no  need  of  war  or  vio- 
lence in  his  dealings  with  these  Indians,  nor 
did  he  employ  them,  for  the  ''Sahalee  Tyee,'' 
the  Indian  god,  had  struck  before  him. 

After  1800  the  smallpox,  measles  and 
consumption  were  always  bus}^,  and  a  death 
in  the  Indian  village  was  a  common  thing.  There 


THE  COMING  AND  THE  GOING     '        45 

was  no  doctor  at  Cathlamet,  and  in  pitiful 
dependence  upon  their  superior  skill  the  Indians 
used  to  come  to  James  Birnie  and  William 
Strong,  the  only  white  settlers  there,  and  ask 
for  medicine,  which  was  always  given  them, 
although  it  was  no  inconsiderable  burden  to 
supply  it. 

But  sickness  in  an  Indian  lodge  was  not  to  be 
checked  by  medicines. 


Vlll. 
THE  MEDICINE  MAN 

IN  addition  to  these  medicines  Indians  of 
the  higher  circles  had  Indian  medicine  men. 
A  sick  Indian,  a  smoky  lodge,  a  hundred  Indians 
beating  the  roof  with  poles  to  a  monotonous 
chant  and  dance,  and  a  temporary  maniac 
manipulating  the  sufferer  with  rattles  and  Indian 
trumpery,  it  was  weird  medical  work,  and  soon 
transferred  the  Indian  of  the  higher  circles  to 
the  select  circle  of  Abraham's  bosom. 

The  Indian  war  dance  has  for  the  last  one  hun- 
dred 3Tars  been  practically  unknown  on  the 
lower  river.  Occasionally  some  feeble  effort  was 
made  to  imitate  it,  but  nothing  was  ever  done 
that  could  for  one  moment  be  compared  with 
the  wild  rush  and  frenzy  of  a  genuine  war  dance 
about  the  campfires  of  the  Spokanes  and 
Cay  uses.  These  were  performances  to  stir  the 
blood  and  raise  the  hair.  Nowhere  along  the 
seacoast  were  there  any  war  dances  to  speak 
of.  Even  among  the  Hydahs,  Tlinklits  and 
Chilcats  of  Alaska  the  war  dance  was  a  spirit- 
less, tame  affair.      The  medicine  dance,  however, 

46 


THE  MEDICINE  MAN  47 

an  entirely  different  thing,  was  at  its  best  among 
the  Coast  tribes. 

There  were  reports  of  Indian  lodges  in 
Western  Oregon  that  were  two  hundred 
and  twenty-four  feet  long,  but  this  is  probably 
an  exaggeration,  and  a  lodge  sixty  or  seventy 
feet  long  must  have  been  a  large  one.  In  such 
a  lodge  in  case  of  sickness  of  some  distinguished 
person  would  be  gathered  at  night  a  hundred  or 
more  Indians.  In  the  sunken  place  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  lodge  cleaned  out  for  this  purpose,  and 
between  the  two  end-fires  would  be  placed 
upon  a  mat  the  sufferer  lightly  covered  with 
furs.  Around  the  sides  and  ends  of  the  lodge 
in  double  and  triple  ranks,  each  with  a  pole  in 
his  hands,  would  be  placed  every  available  Indian 
man,  woman  and  child. 

In  Cathlamet  the  white  children  would 
sometimes  join  in  and  were  always  welcome. 
At  a  given  signal  from  some  master  of  ceremonies 
the  dance  would  commence  by  everybody,  at 
first  slowly,  but  afterwards  more  ciuickly,  jump- 
ing up  and  down  in  their  places  to  a  loud  chant 
of  yo-o-o,  yo-o-o,  3^0,  the  first  two  long 
drawn  out  and  the  last  sharply  cut  off  and 
shouted  almost  explosively.  No  one  stirred 
from  his  position  except  monotonously  to  jump 
up  and  down  with  the  pole  held  upright  in  both 


48  CATHLAMET 

hands  in  front  of  him,  so  that  the  movement 
brought  it  into  contact  with  the  low  roof  in 
perfect  time  with  the  chant  and  the  jumping, 
the  movements  being  so  timed  that  the  poles 
struck  the  roof  all  together  with  the  final  ''yo.'' 
The  noise  was  deafening  and  the  lodge  would 
shake  in  every  timber.  After  this  had  gone  on 
with  increasing  enthusiasm  for  a  half  hour  or  so 
and  the  patient  was  supposed  to  be  sufficiently 
prepared  and  the  evil  spirit  properly  alarmed, 
a  terrific  noise  would  ])e  heard  in  the  darkness 
outside,  and  suddenly  the  medicine  man  and 
four  or  five  assistants  would  come  bounding 
through  the  door  with  howls  and  yells  into  the 
smoky  interior.  They  looked  like  fiends,  bodies 
naked,  faces  covered  with  a  hideous  mask,  over 
which  towered  a  frightful  headdress,  and  in 
their  hands  rattles,  large  cumbersome  things 
decorated  with  teeth  and  feathers.  This  dress 
varied  with  different  people  and  different  medi- 
cine men,  but  the  one  idea  was  to  make  it  as 
hideous  and  awe-inspiring  as  possible  so  as 
to  impress  and  frighten  the  demons  who  had 
wrought  the  evil  witchcraft  upon  the  sufferer. 
Not  for  one  moment  did  the  dancing,  chanting 
or  pounding  cease  or  vary  in  its  monotony. 
The  medicine  man  howling  dismally  circled 
with  great  leaps  and  bounds   about  his  patient, 


THE  MEDICINE  MAN  49 

in  sporting  phrase,  ''sparring  for  an  opening'' 
to  get  to  close  grips  with  the  evil  spirit.  Finally 
his  chance  came.  The  spirit,  invisible  to  all  but 
him,  had  been  caught  off  his  guard.  He  rushed 
in,  seized  the  sick  man,  and  with  hands  and 
teeth  attempted  to  drag  from  him  the  demon 
that  tormented  him.  In  the  contest  the  patient 
was  tossed  and  roughly  handled,  for  Indian 
devils  come  out  reluctanth^  The  performance 
lasted  for  hours,  taking  the  greater  part  of  the 
night  and  the  assemblage  was  wrought  up  to 
frenzy.  The  treatment  stopped  only  because 
human  nature  could  endure  no  more.  With 
the  smoke,  noise  and  general  atmosphere  the 
interior  of  the  lodge  became  unbearable  and 
the  physical  strain  was  too  great  to  be  longer 
endured. 

Sustained  and  soothed  by  this  struggle  with 
the  evil  one  in  his  body,  the  sick  man  him- 
self with  patience  and  before  many  days  gener- 
ally gave   up   the  ghost. 


IX. 

THE  SWEAT  HOUSE 

THEY  had  another  device  that  for  quick 
dispatch  was  superior  even  to  the  personal 
treatment  of  the  medicine  man,  and  this  was 
the  Indian  sweat  house.  No  Indian  man  in  his 
native  state  vohmtarily  or  for  the  sole  purpose 
of  cleansing  himself  ever  took  a  bath.  He  trusted 
to  the  rain  or  to  the  necessary  swimming,  to 
passing  through  the  wet  woods  and  grass  or  to 
mere  dr}^  attrition  for  all  the  personal  cleanliness 
he  deemed  necessary.  It  created  a  sensation 
in  the  highest  social  circles  of  the  Chinooks, 
therefore  when  Duncan  McDougall  caused  his 
Indian  bride-elect  to  be  thoroughly  soaked  and 
washed  preliminary  to  the  marriage  ceremony, 
and  the  fact  was  considered  of  so  much  import- 
ance that  history  has  gravely  recorded  it  as  one 
of  the  notable  circumstances  that  attended  that 
notable  wedding. 

History,  however,  in  giving  so  much  prom- 
inence to  this  fact,  has  done  injustice  to  the 
Indian  woman.  She  was  by  instinct  more  decent 
than    her    Indian    master    and    under    favoring 

5Q 


THE  SWEA  T  HO  USE  51 

circumstances  was  neat  and  clean.  To  her  a 
bath,  although  rare,  was  not  an  unknown 
thing,  and  therefore  the  sweat  house  was  not 
ordinarily  for  her.  To  the  masculine  Indian, 
however,  a  hot  bath  seemed  the  greatest  sacrifice 
he  could  make  to  the  deities  that  ruled  disease 
and  death,  and  so  it  happened  far  back  in  the 
history  of  the  race  that  some  aboriginal  genius 
with  a  talent  for  inventing  great  sacrifices 
invented  and  brought  into  use  the  Indian  sweat 
house.  They  were  not  much  used  on  the  Colum- 
bia River  near  the  ocean,  but  on  the  Cowlitz 
and  Lewis  Rivers,  all  along  the  Valley  of  the 
Willamette  and  on  the  Upper  Columbia  and 
its  tributaries  sweat  houses  were  everywhere 
to  be  seen.  They  were  little,  mound-shaped 
structures  like  a  flat,  old-fashioned  bee-hive, 
were  perhaps  four  feet  in  height  and  five  feet  in 
diameter,  the  size  and  form  varying  a  little  in 
different  localities,  and  were  constructed  on 
the  banks  of  the  cold  running  streams.  They 
were  made  of  willow  branches,  loosely  inter- 
twined after  the  fashion  of  a  great  basket  upside 
down,  without  any  opening  except  a  hole  in 
front  of  just  sufficient  size  for  a  man  to  crawl 
in.  After  the  willow  work  was  completed  it 
was  daubed  over  with  clay,  making  an  almost 
impervious    hut.     The    inside    dimensions    were 


52  CATHLAMET 

carefully  calculated  so  as  to  accommodate  one 
man,  crouched  into  the  smallest  possible  com- 
pass, with  the  necessary  apparatus  for  a  vapor 
bath,  and  the  manner  of  its  use  was  simple. 
After  heating  a  number  of  large  stones  almost 
if  not  quite  red  hot  the  Indian,  naked  as  the  day 
he  was  born,  and  with  a  vessel  of  water,  would 
crawl  in  and  take  the  stones  in  also.  Closing 
the  door  up  tightly  he  would  pour  water  on  the 
hot  stones  until  he  was  almost  parboiled  with 
the  hot  steam.  After  bearing  this  as  long  as 
he  could  the  Indian  would  crawl  out  and  without 
any  preparation  would  plunge  into  the  running 
stream.  In  this  manner  would  be  accomplished 
the  second  great  medical  treatment  of  the  Indian. 
This  course  was  taken  for  any  illness  or  indis- 
position, and  would  be  taken  even  in  midwinter, 
it  not  being  an  unusual  thing  for  a  sick  Indian 
after  such  a  vapor  bath  to  plunge  into  the  water 
while  snowflakes  were  whirling  in  the  air  and 
ice  running  in  the  river.  Where  the  indisposition 
was  slight  or  due  only  to  an  uncleanly  life, 
the  Indian  would  survive  the  treatment  and  be 
even  benefited  by  it,  and  it  was  these  cases  that 
maintained  its  credit  as  a  ''good  medicine"  in 
the  eyes  of  the  tribes. 

With    measles,    smallpox    and    other    diseases 
of  similar  character  it  was  almost  sure  to  cause 


THE  SWEAT  HOUSE  53 

speedy  death,  Init  as  the  Indian  did  not  dis- 
criminate and  with  cheerful  patience  took  it 
for  granted  that  the  afflicted  one  if  he  died  was 
fated  to  death  anyway,  it  did  not  discredit  the 
remedy. 

Occasionally  an  Indian  would  kill  a  med- 
icine man,  or,  as  was  once  done  by  a  sorrow- 
ing chief  of  the  Klickitats,  lasso  the  unsuccessful 
doctor  about  the  neck  and  with  the  lasso  fast 
to  the  saddle  bow,  ride  his  horse  at  full  speed 
until  the  medical  head  was  separated  from  the 
body,  but  no  fault  could  be  found  with  the 
sweat  house,  which  maintained  its  credit  as  a 
sovereign  remedy  until  many  years  after  the 
coming  of  the  whites,  and  this  accounts  for  the 
fact  that  measles  amongst  the  Indian  was  about 
as  deadly  as  the  smallpox. 


X. 

THE  SINS  OF  THE  FATHERS 

WITH  the  white  man  came  whisky  and 
death  hand  in  hand,  and  with  him  came 
the  subtle  laws  under  which  nature  punishes 
infractions  of  its  moral  code,  and  these  laws 
struck  at  the  very  source  of  life  of  the  Indian 
people. 

Lucy  Quillis,  one  of  several  of  the  name,  for 
it  passed  from  one  to  another,  was  the  little  nurse 
in  the  white  family.  She  was  carefully  taught, 
clothed  and  cared  for.  But  in  those  days  you 
might  just  as  well  have  i)ut  a  ju-etty  little  tiger 
cat  in  pantelets.  On  her  part,  with  the  very 
best  intentions,  she  taught  her  infant  charges 
the  Chinook  language,  how  to  gamble  in  Indian 
fashion,  and  some  other  things.  When  she  was 
fifteen  or  sixteen  years  old,  after  the  fashion  of 
the  young  girls  of  her  race,  she  fled  from  the 
house  with  her  lover,  a  most  unworthy  scamp, 
and  so  l^egan  the  life  which  ended  a  few  years 
later  in  all  that  was  left  of  poor  Lucy,  a  mangled, 
battered  body,  being  gathered  up  from  the  floor 
of  the  madhouse  and  buried.     The  ''madhouse" 

54 


THE  SINS  OF  THE  FATHERS  55 

of  the  Lower  Columbia  and  of  Piiget  Sound  was 
not  in  pioneer  days  a  lunatic  asylum  or  a  female 
seminary 7  only  a  judicious  combination  of  the 
two  with  unlimited  whisky  thrown  in. 

The  Indian  woman  of  the  Northwest  Pacific 
Coast  was  not  a  flower-garlanded  maiden  or  a 
frivolous  French  soubrette  or  Light  o'  Love, 
as  so  many  Indian  romances  depict  her.  There 
was  in  her  from  childhood  up  a  certain  gravity 
and  sober  earnestness  which  was  the  natural 
result  of  her  sober,  hard-working  life.  For 
unnumbered  centuries  the  burden  of  the  toil 
and  responsibility  of  her  people  had  been  upon 
her  shoulders,  and  so  far  as  she  had  anything 
to  think  with,  she  was  a  thoughtful,  earnest 
woman.  Inarticulate  and  coy  in  the  expression 
of  her  feeling  to  a  degree  that  imposed  upon 
people  who  did  not  know  of  the  fires  that  glowed 
beneath,  she  was  in  realit}"  alive  and  earnest 
and  had  great  capacities  for  joy  and  suffering. 
Above  all  things  she  was  a  simple,  law-abiding 
creature.  In  the  tribe,  as  a  maiden,  she  obej^ed 
without  question  the  moral  code  such  as  it  was 
of  her  people.  Married  to  an  Indian  husband 
she  was  his  slave,  and  married  to  a  white  man 
and  made  acquainted  with  his  moral  law,  for 
his  wife,  she  would  have  passed  through  fire, 
torture  and  death  before  she  would  have  gone 


56  CATHLAMET 

one  step  out  of  the  straight  path  in  which  he 
desired  her  to  walk. 

There  is  not  on  record  in  Oregon  history  a 
single  case  of  an  unfaithful  Indian  wife  of  a 
decent  white  man,  and  in  view  of  this  one 
cannot  recall  some  particulars  of  the  history  of 
those  early  times  without  a  shudder  or  without 
taking  a  firmer  hold  upon  a  belief  in  a  future 
life  in  which  the  crooked  w^ays  of  this  world  may 
be  made  straight,  for  God  seemed  to  deal  harshly 
witli    the    Indian   woman. 

The  spectre  of  the  Eve  of  St.  John  when  he 
spoke  to  "Smaylho'mes  lady  gay/'  spoke  to 
understanding  ears,  and  when  he  laid  his  burn- 
ing fingers  on  her  fair  arm  wirh  the  declaration: 

"That  lawless  love  is  guilt  above, 
This    awful    sign    receive" 

and  left  there  the  scorched  brand  of  guilt  he 
])randed  wanton  frailty,  but  God's  Angel  of 
Punishment  in  his  dealings  with  many  Indian 
women  laid  his  hand  on  innocent  victims  and 
no  law  protected  them,  no  voice  warned  them, 
and  they  did  not  even  know  for  what  they  were 
stricken. 

It  is  difficult  for  the  white  men  and  women  of 
this  day  to  conceive  of  the  Indian  code  of  morals 
or   to    appreciate   how    perfectly   it    fitted    their 


THE  SINS  OF  THE  FATHERS  57 

wandering  life  or  to  understand  how  trustfully 
and  innocently  the  young  Indian  woman  met 
the  white  strangers  when  they  came.  No  ex- 
ploring or  hunting  party,  however  difficult  or 
arduous  the  journey,  ever  lacked  Indian  women 
to  go  with  it,  and  no  white  man  had  any  diffi- 
culty at  any  time  in  ol)taining  a  companion 
for  his  camp  or  home,  nor  from  the  Indian 
point  of  view  was  there  an3^thing  indelicate  or 
immoral  in  this.  It  w^as  the  old  custom  of  their 
race  come  down  unquestioned  from  Adam  and 
Eve  and  had  the  full  sanction  of  i)arents  and 
friends.  Nevertheless  to  this  trustfulness  and 
innocence  the  terrible  physical  punishment  that 
had  been  evolved  for  a  race  of  men  who  had  been 
educated  for  centuries  was  ruthlessly  applied,  and 
to  make  the  situation  still  more  unhappy  and 
apparently  unjust  no  remedial  or  palliative 
agencies  were  known  to  the  victims.  The  cruel 
thing  about  the  early  history  of  Oregon  was 
that  the  trader  came  so  long  l:>efore  the  mission- 
ary that  death's  work  was  largely  done  to  the 
Indian  woman  before  either  knowledge  or  help 
could  come  to  her. 

One  of  the  saddest  sights  of  early  days  was 
that  of  young  Indian  women  driven  out  of  the 
lodges  to  live  or  die  as  best  they  could  alone  in 
the  woods.     The  other  Indians  would  be  fright- 


58  CATHLAMET 

ened  at  their  sickness  and  in  their  fear  knew  no 
pity.  Occasionally  an  old  woman  or  grand- 
mother, whose  life  was  considered  of  little  value 
either  to  herself  or  her  people,  would  go  out 
with  the  stricken  one  and  care  for  her. 

Such  girls  would  patiently  live  apart  in  some 
little  hut  or  wickie-up  and  without  a  word  of 
complaint  would  care  for  themselves  as  they 
best  could.  The  pioneer  white  women  were  in 
the  habit  of  taking  out  food  and  such  simple 
remedies  as  they  could  think  of  to  these  ])oor 
creatures,  and  not  knowing  the  nature  of  their 
illness  or  daring  to  come  close  to  them,  would 
place  it  upon  a  convenient  stump  to  which  the 
sick  girl  would  come  when  her  friend  had  with- 
drawn a  little,  and  then  the  two  would  cheer- 
fully visit  together  with  ten  or  twenty  yards  of 
pure   air  between   them. 

Ordinarily,  when  white  persons  were  about, 
when  death  came,  the  dead  were  decently  buried, 
l)ut  occasionally  the  interment  was  as  fearful 
as  the  sickness,  and  this  was  true  of  the  victims 
of  any  disease  that  the  Indian  feared  was  in- 
fectious. 

One  Winter  evening  a  good  old  missionary 
telling  in  reflective  mood  his  experiences  on  the 
Northern  Coasts  in  a  smallpox  epidemic,  told  of 
sending  Kathla  a  young  Indian  girl  who  had  con- 


THE  SINS  OF  THE  FATHERS  59 

tracted  the  disease  to  a  hut  far  outside  the 
Indian  village  on  a  point  in  the  bay  where  her 
old  grandmother  went  with  her  as  nurse,  and 
how  every  morning  he  went  in  his  canoe  to  a 
point  of  tide-washed  rocks  near  their  hut,  and 
not  daring  on  account  of  his  people  to  go  nearer, 
shouted  out  his  instructions  and  left  there  their 
food  and  simple  remedies,  and  then  the  missionary 
wandered  off  in  his  stor}^  into  a  general  descrip- 
tion of  that  awful  time,  how  tw^elve  canoes  laden 
with  Indians  seeking  help  camped  on  an  island 
in  the  bay  and  after  some  weeks  only  one  canoe 
went  paddling  away,  and  how,  when  the  scourge 
had  passed  he  sent  out  trusty  men  immune  to 
the  sickness  and  bid  them  bury  the  dead  who 
were  lying  about  in  the  forest  with  orders  after- 
wards to  destroy  their  own  clothing  and  go 
a-hunting  for  six  months  longer  before  returning 
to  the  village,  so  as  not  to  bring  the  infection 
back  with  them,  and  then  he  told  of  one  old 
Indian  who  had  contracted  the  smallpox  and 
who  insisted  upon  having  his  grave  dug  in 
advance  and  his  bed  placed  over  it  so  that  he 
could  drop  handily  into  it  when  he  died,  and 
added,  chuckling,  that  the  old  Indian  did  not 
die  after  all  and  the  grave  was  wasted,  and 
then  he  lapsed  into   silence,  forgetting  that  he 


60  CATHLAMET 

had  left  Kathla's  story  incomplete  until  some 
one    asked    about    it. 

With  an  effort  of  the  memory  recalling  the 
circumstances  the  good  man  answered  as  if  it 
were  an  ordinary  occurrence  of  those  old  days: 

''Kathla  and  her  grandmother,  poor  creatures! 
Oh,  the  wolves  took  them!" 

This  is  the  seamy  side  of  Indian  life  and  the 
process  of  extinction  of  the  Indian  was  grim  in 
spots,  but  strange  as  it  may  seem,  this  period 
of  fifty  or  one  hundred  years  during  which  the 
natives  of  the  Lower  Columbia  were  passing  away, 
was  not  on  the  whole  an  unhappy  time  for  them. 
The  Indian  took  life  day  by  day  and  did  not 
worry  for  the  future.  Sheltered  and  with  enough 
clothes  and  food  he  was  happy.  The  individual 
was  never  seriously  sick  but  once.  The  life 
and  the  medical  system  insured  this  and  the 
fear  of  death  was  not  in  them. 

One  of  the  most  pathetic  characteristics  of 
all  the  Indians  on  the  Pacific  Coast  was  their 
submission  to  what  seemed  the  inevitable.  A 
sick  Indian  gave  up  at  once  and  died  with  no 
more  fear  or  apparent  suffering  than  if  he  were 
falling  asleep,  and  his  relatives  buried  him  with 
low  wailings,  the  sorrow  of  which  died  out  with 
the  echo. 

To  this  day  in  Alaska  the  dying  Indian 
will  talk  of  his  own  coming  death  with  a  gentle 
patience  that  seems  to  cast  out  all  fear. 


XL 

THE  BROKEN  TRIBES 

ONE  of  the  effects  of  this  earlier  decimation 
of  the  people  was  a  scattering  of  all  of 
the  Indians  of  the  Lower  Columbia  River  Valley. 
They  fled  from  their  homes  and  temporarily 
settled  in  any  j^lace  that  provided  them  with 
the  means  of  livelihood  or  that  promised  exemp- 
tion from  the  plague  that  afflicted  them.  In 
this  way  the  Cathlamets,  whose  home  was 
originally  upon  the  Oregon  side  of  the  Columbia 
River,  below  Puget  Island,  after  wanderings 
that  are  not  recorded,  finally  settled  upon  the 
present  site  of  Cathlamet  and  near  the  place 
of  the  ancient  Indian  town,  and  from  this  people 
the  modern  town  derives  its  name. 

The  Wahkiakums,  who  lived  in  the  ancient 
Indian  village  on  the  Elokomon  Slough,  near 
Cathlamet,  returned  to  the  ancient  townsite 
after  the  panic  was  over,  but  only  to  leave 
it  shortly  after  the  coming  of  the  Lewis  and 
Clark  expedition.  This  people  gave  their  name 
to  the  County  of  Wahkiakum,  within  which 
Cathlamet   is   situated.     What  final  catastrophe 

61 


62  CATHLAMET 

compelled  the  Wahkiakiims  to  leave  their 
ancient  village  is  not  known,  but  chaiTed 
timbers  and  burned  and  blackened  soil  on  the 
site  of  the  old  town  point  almost  certainly 
to  fire  as  the  final  scourge  of  the  Indians  on  the 
Elokomon    Slough. 

These  fragments  of  the  Wahkiakum  and 
Cathlamet  peoples  took  up  their  homes  together 
on  the  main  Columl)ia  River  about  one  mile 
East  of  the  old  Indian  village.  Here  they  l)uilt 
their  cedar  houses  and  founded  what  is  now 
the  modern  village  of  Cathlamet. 

What  took  place  near  Cathlamet  must  have 
taken  place  all  over  Western  Oregon.  Panic- 
stricken  for  the  time  the  native  people  wan- 
dered about  for  several  years,  and  fragments 
only  of  the  ancient  tribes  returned  to  their  old 
seats. 

With  this  dispersion  came  an  almost  total 
disappearance  of  the  tribal  bonds  and  relation- 
ships. Every  little  settlement  became  a  law 
to  itself,  and  in  Western  Oregon  there  were  no 
sharply  defined  tribal  ties  or  boundaries.  These 
peoples,  as  the  white  men  came  in,  were  gradu- 
ally given  the  names  of  the  localities  in  which 
they  were  found,  or,  as  often  happened,  the 
locality  was  given  the  name  of  the  principal 
Indian  man  who  was  found  there,  and  afterwards 


THE  BROKEN  TRIBES  63 

the  resident  peo])le  were  known  l)y  the  same 
name.  Thus  Wahkiakum  was  a  chief  of  the 
Cathlamets,  and  yet  two  tribes  have  apparently 
derived  their  names,  one  from  the  chief  and  one 
from  the  locality.  These  two  tril^es  came  to- 
gether, and  the  double  name,  Wahkiakum- 
Cathlamet,  is  now  perpetuated  in  the  modern 
County  of  Wahkiakum  and  Village  of  Cathlamet. 
The  building  up  of  Indian  names  for  modern 
use  was  a  wondrous  process,  and  no  man  knows 
just  how  it  was  done. 

The  Chinooks,  Clatsops,  Cathlamet-Wahkia- 
kums,  and  Coweliskies,  with  the  native  people 
of  the  Lower  Willamette  Valley,  in  this  later 
period,  roamed  up  and  down  the  Columbia  and 
Willamette  Rivers  between  the  Cascades  of 
the  Columbia  and  the  Falls  of  the  Willamette 
on  the  East,  and  the  ocean  on  the  West,  and 
individuals  of  any  tribe  took  up  their  residence 
at  any  place  that  pleased  them,  and  in  this  way 
a  good  deal  of  mingling  of  the  Indians  took 
place. 

With  this  dispersion  of  the  Indians  came  an 
absolute  failure  in  chieftainship.  From  1800 
on  to  the  end  it  is  remarkable  how  barren  the 
lower    river    was    of    chiefs. 

Comcomly,  of  the  Chinooks;  Chenamus,  of 
the  Clatsops;    Wahkiakum,   of  the  Cathlamets, 


64  CATHLAMET 

and  Umtux,  of  the  Coweliskies,  are  the  only  four 
borne  in  remembrance,  and  of  these  Wahkiakum 
is  known  from  a  line  or  two  in  Washington 
Irving  and  as  the  founder  of  Cathlamet,  while 
Umtux  emerges  from  obscurity  only  by  reason 
of  his  tragical  end  at  the  battle-ground  back 
of  Fort  Vancouver  during  the  Indian  war  of 
1855-56. 

Comcomly  was  more  nearly  a  chief  than  any 
other  Indian  on  the  Columl^ia  West  of  the 
Cascades,  and  this  Duncan  McDougall  recog- 
nized in  1813  when  he  married  one  of  his  daugh- 
ters. Many  other  Indians  are  named  as  chiefs 
in  the  books,  and  some  of  them  may  have  had 
some  claim  to  the  title,  l)ut  early  historians 
called  any  principal  man  of  the  natives  a  chief. 
In  fact,  from  the  time  of  Cartier's  voyage,  in 
1535,  when  a  quaint  old  historian,  writing  of 
the  Indian  town  of  Hochelaga,  on  the  St. 
Lawrence,  speaks  of  meeting  an  Indian,  ''one 
of  the  principal  lords  of  the  said  city,"  to  1608, 
w^hen  in  the  Long  Wigwam  of  W^esowocomoco, 
the  mighty  Emperor  Powhattan,was  divested 
of  his  greasy  raccoon  robe  and  gowned  and 
crowned  in  kingly  style  ])y  the  English,  up  to 
the  present  time,  very  erroneous  ideas  have  pre- 
vailed in  regard  to  the  power  and  authority  of 
Indian  chiefs.     In  time  of  war  thev  were  allowed 


THE  BROKEN  TRIBES  65 

a  little  authority,  but  not  much.  In  Eastern 
Oregon,  where  chiefs  were  plenty,  they  were 
without  authority  in  time  of  peace,  bej^ond  the 
influence  of  their  personal  wealth  and  character, 
and  on  the  lower  river  the  villages  w^re  without 
law  or  authority  from  any  native  source. 

During  the  latter  days  of  Indian  Cathlamet, 
Quillis  was  the  principal  man  of  the  village, 
and  had  the  largest  lodge  and  family,  and  in 
earlier  times  would  have  been  called  a  chief, 
but  poor  QuilHs  squal^l^led  and  scrambled  with 
his  brother  Indians  on  terms  of  perfect  equality, 
and  if  a  canoe  was  to  be  hired  or  any  contract 
made,  his  word  was  no  better  than  that  of  anyone 
else. 


XII. 
THE  WHITE  CHIEFS 

WHILE  this  confusion  was  at  its  height  a  new 
element  came  in,  so  wedded  to  the  Indian 
Ufe  that  it  became  part  and  parcel  of  it,  and 
lived  and  died  with  it. 

When  in  1670  the  "Governor  and  Company 
of  Adventurers  of  England  trading  into  Hudson's 
Bay/'  commenced  to  trade  as  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company  with  North  America,  they  had 
no  purpose  of  founding  a  dynasty,  and  yet 
that  is  what  they  did :  tlie  dynast}^  of  the  chiefs 
of    the    Indian    people. 

Good  old  Dr.  John  McLoughlin,  at  Van- 
couver, was  in  all  essential  things  a  chief 
of  the  Indian  people.  His  authority  on  the 
Columbia  West  of  the  Cascades  was  abso- 
lute, and  it  extended  with  varying  power  over 
the  entire  region  North  of  California  and  West 
of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  His  word  was  law 
to  a  lawless  people,  and  the  great  chief  was 
known  as  such  among  all  the  Indians.  He 
had  all  the  characteristics  of  a  chief — a  quick 
temper,  an  arbitrary  will  and  the  heart  and  the 


THE  WHITE  CHIEFS  67 

head  of  a  governor  of  men.  He  lived  in  im- 
pressive pomp,  and  all  down  the  river  the  story 
of  the  stately  halls  and  the  wealth  and  mag- 
nificence of  Fort  Vancouver  was  told  by  Indian 
to  Indian  with  Ixated  beath.  The  present 
generation  can  never  fully  realize  that  Fort 
Vancouver  was  once  in  this  Northwest  country 
the  court  of  a  King,  and  that  poor  Indians  wan- 
dering chieftainless  and  alone  looked  to  it  as  a 
center  of  power,  culture  and  wealth.  In  the 
lodges  of  Cathlamet,  Indian  mothers  told  their 
children  of  the  wonderful  place  and  of  the  wealth 
of  red  blankets,  of  gay  silk  handkerchiefs  and 
of  powder  and  shot  and  provisions  that  were 
to   be   found   in   its   storehouses. 

The  affection  and  respect  of  the  Indians  for 
McIiOughlin  was  quickened  by  the  fact  of  his 
having  a  wife  of  the  Indian  l^lood,  who  bore 
herself  in  her  relations  to  her  husband  and 
the  world  as  the  wife  of  an  Indian  chieftain 
should.  How  much  of  the  blood  of  this  good 
woman  was  French  or  Scottish  and  how 
much  Ojibway  Indian  nobody  knows,  but 
she  carried  herself  as  an  Indian  woman, 
and  when  visitors  were  at  Fort  Vancouver, 
effaced  herself  in  true  Indian  fashion;  loved  and 
respected  of  her  husband  and  of  every  one,  she, 
according   to   common   report,   never   presumed 


68  CATHLAMET 

at  Fort  Vancouver  to  sit  at  her  husband's  table 
in  the  presence  of  strangers,  and  in  this,  accord- 
ing to  Indian  notions,  was  only  rendering  due 
respect  to  her  lord  and  master. 

No  requirement  of  Indian  etiquette  was  more 
imperative  than  this,  that  an  Indian  woman 
should  not  be  seen  eating  with  her  husband. 
It  was  her  duty  to  wait  upon  and  serve  him,  and 
afterwards  provide  for  herself.  It  made  no 
difference  how  wealthy  she  was,  or  how  many 
servants  she  might  have  to  wait  upon  her,  she 
never  presumed  to  put  herself  upon  an  equality 
with  her  husband  or  to  be  served  ])efore  him. 
This  was  not  an  invariable  rule,  as  more  than 
one  Indian  woman  took  her  place  at  the  head 
of  her  white  husl^and's  table  and  there  welcomed 
his  guests,  but  this  was  not  common  and  was 
generally  confined  to  Indian  women  married 
from  tribes  East  of  the  Rocky  Mountains, 

There  are  wives  of  the  Indian  blood  now  living 
on  the  Lower  Columbia  whose  hus1:)ands  are 
well-to-do,  influential  men,  who  are  loved  and 
respected  of  their  husbands,  who  have  the  re- 
spect of  the  communities  in  which  they  are 
known,  and  who  live  handsomeh'  and  well,  yet 
who  will  not  to  this  dav  sit  at  their  own  bounti- 


THE  WHITE  CHIEFS  69 

fill  and  well-appointed  tables  with  their  husband 
and  his  guests.  This  native  shA'ness  and  reserve 
it  is  almost  impossible  for  the  native  women  to 
give  up,  and  it  enhanced  Dr.  IMcLoughlin's  dig- 
nity in  the  eyes  of  the  natives  that  his  wife  treat- 
ed him  as  a  chief. 


XIIL 

INDIAN  WIVES 

rjIHE  relation  of  the  white  chiefs  of  the 
-L  Hudson's  Bay  Company  with  native  women 
presents  a  point  of  vivid  interest  in  Indian  his- 
tory. For  twenty  years  Fort  Vancouver,  like  all 
other  Hudson's  Bay  posts,  was  the  home  of  fair- 
faced  men  and  dark-faced  women.  There  is  no 
doubt  as  to  the  standing  of  the  women.  They 
had  been  wedded  in  the  ancient  and  orderly 
fashion  of  their  people  and  in  the  forum  of  con- 
science were  as  much  married  as  ever  Queen 
Victoria  was.  They  knew  that  their  husbands 
could  dismiss  them  at  any  time,  but  this  was 
the  ancient  and  inalienal)le  right  of  the  husband 
according  to  Indian  ideas,  and  so  without  a 
thought  or  care  for  the  future  they  gladly 
gave  themselves  to  their  white  masters  and 
made  loving  and  dutiful  wives,  and  being  used 
to  the  country  and  at  home,  made  very  effective 
helpmeets.  The  men  accepted  them  upon  the 
same  terms  and  not  one  man  in  ten  dreamed  at 
first  of  the  relation  becoming  a  permanent  one. 
The}'  were  not  of  the  class  of  the  settlers,  and 

70 


INDIAN  WIVES  71 

each  man  expected  in  due  time  to  return  to 
England  and  there  marry  and  found  a  family. 
Some  of  them  did  dismiss  their  Indian  wives. 
There  were  two  ways  of  doing  this.  One  was 
to  pass  the  wife^  often  with  a  bonus  of  goods  or 
furs,  over  to  some  other  white  man;  and  this, 
although  a  cruel  process,  was  much  more  merci- 
ful than  the  other,  which  was  to  send  the  woman 
back  to  her  own  people.  No  one  who  has  ever 
seen  an  Indian  wife  of  a  white  man  sent  back  to 
her  people  ever  wanted  to  see  such  a  thing  again. 
Sorrowfully  gathering  up  her  little  belongings, 
lingering  over  the  task  as  long  as  possible,  the 
poor  dumb  creature  would  finally  come  to  the 
last  parting.  Without  outcry  or  struggle  she 
would  try  to  accept  her  fate.  One  or  two  good- 
bye kisses,  for  the  Indian  women  under  the 
training  of  the  white  men  soon  learned  to  kiss, 
and  then  with  her  little  l^undles  she  would  make 
her  way  back  to  the  lodges.  For  days  and  weeks 
she  would  bring  little  gifts  of  berries  and  game 
and  lay  them  on  her  husband's  doorstep,  and 
for  days  and  weeks  would  haunt  the  trading 
post  or  humbly  stand  near  her  husband's  house, 
where  he  could  see  her,  not  daring  to  ask  to  be 
taken  back,  only  hoping  that  his  mood  might 
change  and  that  she  might  again  be  restored  to 
her  old  place.     Resolute  men  broke  down  under 


72  CATHLAMET 

the  strain  of  such  partings  and  took  back  their 
dusky  wives  for  better  or  for  worse  until  death 
should   them   part. 

With  the  higher  class  of  Hudson's  Bay  man 
the  original  marriage  relation  was  very  rarely 
dissolved.  Little  by  little  the  light  shone  in 
upon  him.  Seeing  at  last  clearly  what  he  had 
done  and  strengthened  by  love  of  wife  and  chil- 
dren after  many  soul  struggles,  he  faced  his 
dut}^  nobly,  and  calling  in  the  minister  took 
upon  himself  the  marriage  vows  that  bound 
him   as   well   as   the   woman. 

Dr.  McLoughlin  was  married  after  the  English 
fashion  in  1836.  eleven  years  after  he  and  his 
wife  had  come  to  Fort  Vancouver.  Sir  James 
Douglas  was  married  at  the  same  time,  while 
another  prominent  Hudson  Bay  man  and  his 
wife  were  joined  together  in  the  white  man's 
fashion  by  the  same  minister  that  married  their 
daughter  to  her  husband  and  at  the  same  time. 

Romance  treats  it  lightly,  but  whole  tragedies 
of  self-renunciation  were  l^ound  up  in  many  of 
these  marriages. 

Before  McLoughlin  came  to  Oregon  another 
servant  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  had 
been  exercising  all  the  functions  and  authority 
of  a  chief  of  the  Indians.  James  Birnie  was  in 
every  respect  an  interesting  character,  and  liad 


INDIAN  WIVES  73 

great  influence  with  the  Indians  of  the  Cohimbia 
River,  and  from  1846  to  his  death  in  1864  he 
lived  and  with  his  wife  reigned  at  Cathlamet. 
He  connected  himself  with  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  at  Montreal,  and  three  years  later,  in 
1820,  established  a  Hudson's  Bay  Company  post 
at  The  Dalles.  He  was  at  Fort  Simpson  in 
British  Columbia,  where  one  of  the  islands  out- 
side the  harbor  now^  bears  his  name,  and  after- 
wards was  in  charge  of  Fort  George,  now  Astoria, 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  River.  In  1846 
he  severed  his  connection  with  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company  and  settled  in  Cathlamet,  the  first 
w^hite  man  to  make  a  home  there.  Here  he  and 
his  wife  ruled  in  state  and  conducted  what  was 
in  all  essential  particulars  a  post  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company.  The  square  Hudson's  Bay  store 
just  east  of  the  present  steamboat  landing  at 
Cathlamet  still  stands.  At  least  it  is  in  the 
same  position  and  is  of  the  same  shape,  but 
clapboards  and  paint  have  given  it  a  modern 
appearance.  The  old  Birnie  house  was  on  the 
crest  of  the  hill  just  back  of  the  store.  Like 
McLoughlin,  Mr.  Birnie  had  an  Indian  wife, 
brought  with  him  from  the  Red  River  Indians 
of  the  East;  but  she,  unlike  Mrs.  McLoughlin, 
bore  herself  with  all  the  self-assertion  of  an  Eng- 
lish   dame   of    long    pedigree.     She    entertained 


74  CATHLAMET 

in  her  own  home  and  sat  at  the  head  of  her 
own  table,  and  no  social  center  in  those  days  in 
all  the  country  was  more  fashionabl}^  attended 
than  that  of  Mrs.  Birnie.  Once  only  in  the  year 
did  she  resume  her  Indian  character,  and  that 
was  for  her  annual  trip  to  Shoalwater  Bay  for 
elk  meat,  clams  and  cranberries. 

Mrs.  Birnie 's  canoe  was  one  of  the  wonders 
of  the  lower  river.  No  larger  one  in  the  memory 
of  Indians  had  ever  been  seen  there.  It  was 
said  that  it  could  carr}^  seventy  people.  In 
the  fall  of  the  year  this  canoe,  manned 
by  twenty  or  thirty  Indian  men  and  women, 
with  all  their  belongings  and  household 
furniture  aboard,  would  start  seaward  from 
Cathlamet.  Mrs.  Birnie,  all  fire  and  energy, 
would  be  in  command,  and  no  woman  on  the 
river  could  command  better.  To  the  dip  of  the 
paddles  and  the  Indian  chant,  the  big  canoe, 
enforcing  respect  everywhere,  would  pass  the 
Chinook  villages  into  Chinook  River  to  the 
portage.  Here  the  expedition  would  be  taken 
over  to  the  Nasel  River  and  from  there  would 
pass  into  Shoalwater  Bay.  After  a  few  weeks  of 
hunting  and  fishing  the  party,  with  its  spoils, 
w^ould  return  b}^  the  same  route.  Disj^osing 
of  her  gatherings  and  scattering  her  party,  Mrs. 
Birnie  would  doff  her  Indian  character  and  again 


INDIAN  WIVES  75 

assume  her   role    as    the  grand  dame  of  Birnie 
hall. 

Here  was  one  of  the  great  gathering  places 
of  the  lower  river,  and  here  at  the  wedding  of 
Mrs.  Birnie 's  daughters  were  gathered  imposing 
assemblies.  Thomas  Fielding  Scott,  first  mis- 
sionary bishop  of  Oregon,  an  imposing  figure  in 
full  canonicals,  performed  the  marriage  cere- 
monies. The  Indians  looked  on  in  awe  and 
amazement,  and  for  weeks  afterwards  the  little 
Indians  gave  dress  rehearsals  of  the  white  man's 
wedding.  The  white  robes  of  the  bishop,  which 
in  their  untutored  way  they  took  to  be  a  glorified 
nightgown  or  white  blanket  in  some  way  pecul- 
iarly appropriate  for  weddings,  particularly  took 
their  fancy.  To  see  a  dirty  little  brat  of  an  Indian 
with  a  piece  of  old  cloth  on,  through  rents  in 
which  gleamed  a  brown  little  stomach,  attempt 
to  repeat  the  marriage  ceremony  to  a  couple 
of  other  little  brats,  was  very  funny. 


XIV. 
KEEPING  THE  PEACE 

NEITHER  Mr.  Birnie  nor  any  of  the  Hudson 
Bay  employees  had  any  legal  authority 
over  the  Indians;  law  in  these  very  early  days 
was  chiefly  conspicuous  for  its  absence,  but  each 
and  every  one  of  them  fearlessly  assumed  the 
duty  of  a  chief  bound  to  maintain  order  within 
the  bounds  of  his  jurisdiction.  Occasionally  Dr. 
McLoughlin  would  have  an  Indian  murderer 
hanged,  and  he  never  permitted  any  serious 
offense  to  go  unpunished,  but  severe  measures 
were  rarely  necessary. 

Occasionally  a  naval  expedition  was  sent  out, 
but  these  on  the  lower  river  were  not  very 
destructive.  George  B.  Roberts,  Dr.  McLough- 
lin's  Prime  Minister  at  Vancouver,  who  in  the 
latter  part  of  his  life  lived  and  finally  died  at 
Cathlamet,  and  who  knew  more  of  affairs  at 
Vancouver  and  of  the  Indians  than  almost  any 
one  else,  had  many  comical  tales  to  tell  of  these 
expeditions.  The  irate  old  doctor  would  storm 
about  and  order  the  instant  punishment  of  the 
offending    Chinooks.        If    the   armed    schooner 

76 


KEEPING  THE  PEACE  77 

Cadboro  was  away  another  little  schooner  would 
be  hauled  to  the  bank  and  a  big  gun  would  with 
infinite  difficulty  be  transferred  from  the  fort 
to  her  deck,  where  it  would  be  carefully  balanced 
to  prevent  an  upset.  Then  in  charge  of  a  flotilla 
of  canoes  the  schooner  with  the  great  black 
gun  looming  up  impressively  on  the  forward 
deck  would  proceed  down  the  river  to  the  great 
awe  and  astonishment  of  all  the  Indians  until 
opposite  the  Chinook  town,  where  she  would 
come  to  anchor.  After  allowing  a  sufficient 
time  for  every  Chinook  to  get  well  away  the 
big  gun  would  be  carefully  trained  upon  a  spot 
where  good  old  Roberts  thought  there  was  no 
danger  of  hitting  anybody  and  fired  several 
times.  A  few  houses  would  be  knocked  clown 
and  a  few  canoes  would  be  captured.  The 
Indians  would  make  restitution  and  the  principal 
offenders  would  receive  some  slight  punishment. 
Then  Dr.  McLoughlin  and  Birnie  and  Roberts 
and  the  others  would  be  again  indulgent  chiefs 
of  their  weak  and  erring  people,  and  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company  would  again  enfold  them  with 
its  protection.  The  schooner  victorious,  big 
gun  and  all,  would  sail  up  the  river  amidst  great 
rejoicing  and  promptly  resume  its  peaceful 
business  of  carrying  goods  and  furs. 

The    chief   instrument   of   discipline   was    the 


78  CATHLAMET 

store,  for  here  every  Indian  was  well  known, 
and  he  could  trade  to  such  extent  only  as  the 
factor  allowed.  If  for  any  reason  he  was  on  the 
black  list  for  offenses  unatoned  for  it  made  no 
difference  how  many  beaver  skins  he  could  pro- 
duce. There  w^as  no  sugar  or  tobacco,  powder, 
shot  or  blankets  for  him.  In  serious  cases  the 
store  would  be  entirely  closed  to  the  whole  people 
and  this  would  bring  the  most  stubborn  tribe 
to  its  knees,  for  without  powder  and  shot  they 
were  helpless,  and  without  sugar  and  tobacco 
they  were  miserable.  All  hunting  and  fishing 
would  stop,  and  about  the  storehouse  would 
be  gathered,  stolid  but  unhappy  groups  of  Indian 
men  and  women  sc^aatting  on  the  ground  and 
discussing    the    situation. 

Finally  a  subdued  and  repentant  committee 
of  the  principal  men  would  wait  u})on  the  offended 
factor.  They  would  be  received  with  severe  and 
impressive  dignity,  would  very  likely  be  kept 
waiting  for  several  days  for  an  interview  with 
the  chief.  When  admitted  to  his  presence  their 
business  would  be  curtly  and  sternly  demanded 
of  them.  Then  a  great  silence  would  prevail 
not  a  word  would  be  said  perhaps  for  half  an 
hour  or  more.  Finally  a  principal  man  would 
rise  in  his  place  and  mournfully  lay  before  the 
factor    the    unhappy    condition    of    his    people, 


KEEPING  THE  PEACE  79 

carefully  refraining  from  mentioning  what  he 
and  the  factor  and  everybody  else  knew  was 
the  secret  of  the  whole  trouble.  Then  the  factor 
upon  his  part  would  curtly  tell  them  what  they 
all  very  well  knew,  that  at  such  a  time  and  place 
a  white  trapper  had  been  robbed  of  his  furs  and 
outfit,  and  that  until  these  had  been  returned 
and  the  criminals  given  up  for  punishment  his 
heart  was  angry  towards  them,  and  that  there 
were  no  goods  for  any  one  until  restitution  had 
been  made.  After  expressing  their  astonish- 
ment at  the  news  and  denying  all  knowledge  of 
the  affair  and  any  ability  to  detect  or  bring  in 
the  offenders,  the  Indian  committee  would 
slowly  stalk  out,  and  the  groups  al30ut  the  store 
would  begin  again  their  subdued  conversations. 

After  a  clay  or  two  some  of  the  plundered 
goods  would  be  returned.  The  factor  would 
be  obdurate.  Then  more  would  come  in.  Still 
the  factor  shook  his  head.  After  awhile  all 
would  be  returned  and  the  solemn  committee 
would  ask  for  mercy,  and  would  plaintively 
tell  that  the  robbers  were  of  another  tribe;  that 
they  had  gone  to  a  far-off  illihee,  etc.,  etc.,  but 
all  in  vain. 

After  a  few  days  more  Indian  Jim  and  Indian 
Joe  and  their  associates  would  be  produced  as 
the  culprits.     In  nearly  every  case  the  offenders 


80  CATHLAMET 

would  surrender  themselves  to  justice  when  the 
pressure  on  their  people  became  sufficiently 
hard,  but  if  not  they  were  brought  in  by  force. 

Indians  acted  very  much  as  children  do,  and 
one  of  their  peculiarities  was  that  a  criminal 
seemed  unable  to  keep  silent  regarding  his  crime, 
and  however  disastrous  the  consequences  might 
be  to  himself,  was  compelled  to  confess  and  give 
himself  up. 

As  one  by  one  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company 
gave  up  its  posts  the  men  who  were  foot  loose 
returned  to  English  soil,  but  many  were  not 
so  free.  Dr.  McLoughlin  and  James  Birnie, 
happy  in  their  married  life,  were  nevertheless 
not  in  a  position  to  return  home,  and  were  com- 
pelled to  stay  in  the  wilderness  with  their  wilder- 
ness people,  and  this  was'  true  of  hundreds  of 
others.  Ties  carelessly  assumed  at  first,  in  the 
end  held  these  men  captives  by  a  chain  that  they 
could  not  and  would  not  break. 

Already  men  and  women  are  proud  of  the 
Indian  blood  in  their  veins,  and  more  and 
more  this  feeling  will  grow,  but  at  this  early 
time  the  Indian  wife  could  only  be  happy 
in  her  native  land,  and  was  unfitted  for  any 
other;  and  it  speaks  well  for  the  great  hearts 
of  these  noble  men  that  they  recognized  this 
and  gaA^e  themselves  a    willing  sacrifice    to    a 


KEEPING  THE  PEACE  81 

new  country  and  a  dying  race.  They  had  con- 
nected themselves  with  a  changing  time  and  were 
compelled  to   change  and  pass  away  with  it. 

The  clinging  arms  of  the  wilderness  women 
were  about  them  and  held  them  to  their  forest 
life.  There  they  lived  and  there  they  died, 
and  the  God  of  the  wilderness  has  pronounced 
their  work  oood. 


XV. 

CHIEF  UMTUX 

MENTION  has  -  been  made  of  the  peaceful 
character  of  the  Indians  along  the  Lower 
Columbia  and  their  broken  strength.  It  is  a  fact, 
therefore,  to  ])e  noticed  that  after  Fort  Vancou- 
ver came  into,  the  possession  of  the  Americans  a 
number  of  these  Indians  did  on  one  occasion  form 
line  of  battle  against  the  whites  and  that  by  rea- 
son of  what  then  happened  one  spot  in  the  Lower 
Columl)ia  River  Valley  bears  to  this  day  the  title 
of  a  battle  ground. 

The  Coweliskies  who  lived  on  the  Cowlitz 
River,  then  known  as  the  Coweliskie,  and 
along  the  two  branches  of  the  Lewis  River 
in  what  is  now  known  as  Cowlitz  and  Clark 
Counties  of  the  State  of  Washington,  were  not 
of  the  pure  river  type  of  Indian,  nor  did  they  live 
directly  on  the  banks  of  the  Columbia.  They 
had  a  trail  extending  from  the  Cowlitz  River 
to  the  gravel  plains  South  of  Olympia,  Tacoma 
and  Seattle.  Some  of  them  who  lived  near  the 
Gravel  Plains  had  ponies  and  were  what  might 
be    called    half   horse   and    half   canoe    Indians. 


CHIEF  UMTUX  83 

They  were  a  more  lively  and  warlike  people  than 
the  Chinooks  and  held  a  middle  position  be- 
tween the  Columbia  River  and  the  Puget  Sound 
Indians. 

Indians  are  by  nature  great  gamblers,  and 
it  is  hard  where  all  so  excelled  to  specify 
any  one  tribe  that  was  preeminent  in  this  fasci- 
nating vice,  but  perhaps  the  Indians  of  the  Lower 
Puget  Sound  country  were  entitled  to  this  award. 
Too  timorous  to  go  to  actual  war  and  take  chances 
with  death,  they  were  also  too  adventurous  to 
be  contented  in  mere  eating  and  drinking,  and 
therefore  gambled  with  an  abandon  that  put  to 
shame  the  very  best  modern  efforts  of  our  gilded 
youth.  The  white  man  plays  to  some  limit, 
but  these  Indians  had  none.  Whenever  any 
of  these  Indian  communities  on  Puget  Sound 
accpiired  enough  portable  property  to  make  it 
worth  while  they  sent  out  invitations  to  their 
neighbors  for  a  meeting  at  some  appointed 
place,  and  to  this  spot  the  Indians  would  flock 
from  every  point  of  the  compass.  They  would 
bring  wdth  them  their  wives,  children,  dogs, 
horses,  furs,  robes,  weapons  and  every  bit  of  their 
property  that  they  could  carry  along,  leaving 
nothing  at  home  except  their  canoes  and  lodges. 
The    prominent    features    of    these    al)original 


84  CATHLAMET 

fairs  or  expositions  were  what  might  he  called 
''agricultural  horse  trots." 

Horse  racing  as  a  gambling  game  was  an  insti- 
tution amongst  them,  and  every  little  com- 
munity of  the  horse  Indians  had  its  racing  pony, 
which  was  at  once  its  pride  and  hope.  Other 
gambling  games  were  played  at  these  meetings 
but  the  horse  race  was  the  greatest  of  them  all. 
Curiously  enough  the  Indian  in  his  native  state 
never  raced  canoes.  This  is  a  modern  invention 
of   the   white    man. 

To  these  race  meets  appointed  by  the  Indians 
of  Lower  Puget  Sound  many  of  the  Coweliskies 
with  their  wives  and  chattels  would  go,  and 
generally  thej'  came  back  afoot  without  their 
chattels   and  sometimes   without   their  wives. 

Upon  the  speed  of  their  favorite  pony  the 
Indians  would  stake  everything,  robes,  goods 
and  horses,  and,  the  fever  of  gambling  upon 
them,  would  not  hesitate  to  stake  and  lose  the 
clothing  from  off  their  backs  or  even  their  faithful 
squaws.  This  betting  of  a  wife  upon  a  gambling 
game  was  a  rare  event,  not  l^ecause  of  any  disin- 
clination on  the  part  of  the  loving  husband  to 
put  up  the  wife  of  his  bosom  on  a  wager,  but 
rather  to  the  disinclination  of  the  other  man 
to  put  up  anything  of  value  against  such  skittish 
property  as  Indian  squaws.     The  Indian  might 


CHIEF  UMTUX  85 

be  a  gambler,  but  he  wasn't  always  a  fool, 
and  to  win  an  assorted  lot  of  wives  was  not 
exactly  the  way  to  get  rich  or  happy.  It  was 
only  in  cases  like  that  of  the  amorous  Jewish 
King  that  an  Indian  would  in  a  gambling  game 
put  up  anything  of  value  against  an  Indian 
woman,  and  had  King  David  and  his  faithful 
Uriah  been  Columbia  River  Indians  the  wiley 
old  lover  would  have  needed  only  to  put  his 
faithful  soldier  in  the  front  of  a  poker  game 
to  get  his  wife,  and  the  putting  of  Uriah  in  the 
front  of  the  battle  and  the  shedding  of  blood 
would  have  been  spared  the  Psalmist. 

This  intercourse  of  the  Coweliskies  and  the 
Puget  Sound  Indians  naturally  made  them 
friendly,  and  when  the  Indian  Avar  of  1855-6  was 
in  progress  and  Chief  Leschi  on  the  Sound  was 
taking  the  Puget  Sound  Indians  into  war  with 
the  whites,  great  fear  was  felt  on  the  Columbia 
River  that  the  Coweliskies  would  be  drawn 
into  the  conflict,  and  it  was  deemed  best  to  keep 
them  at  Fort  Vancouver,  and  there  they  were 
brought  and  kept  in  semi-imprisonment.  At 
this  time  the  regulars  were  in  the  field,  and  a 
company  of  volunteers  was,  greath^  to  its  dis- 
satisfaction and  to  the  dissatisfaction  of  its 
Captain,  in  garrison  at  Fort  Vancouver,  and  the 
fort  was  the  center  of  more  general  alarms  and 


86  CATHLAMET 

troubles  than  any  other  point  in  the  Northwest. 
The  Yakima  Indians  were  attacking  the 
Cascades  settlement  onl}^  thirty  miles  to  the  East- 
ward, and  a  large  number  of  settlers  had  been 
killed  there.  General,  then  Lieutenant  Philip 
Sheridan,  with  only  forty  men,  the  last  of  the 
regulars,  had  gone  to  the  Cascades  to  withstand 
them,  and  was  having  a  hard  time.  Ever}^- 
where  fear  was  about  Vancouver  and  all  of  the 
settlers  from  the  threatened  points  were  en- 
camped about  it  for  protection. 

Panics  were  of  daily  happening  and  it  was  a 
common  occurrence  for  such  a  panic  to  arise  in 
some  strange  way  in  the  middle  of  the  night. 
A  cry  would  be  raised  in  the  darkness  that  the 
Indians  were  coming,  and  in  a  moment  the 
muddy  roads  and  trails  through  the  dark  woods 
would  be  thronged  with  the  ]xanic-stricken 
peoi)le  fleeing  to  the  fort  for  protection.  Most 
of  the  men  were  absent  at  the  front  fighting 
Indians,  but  the  trampling  women  and  children 
had  a  hard  time  of  it,  and  the  few  men  stationed 
at  the  fort,  and  especially  the  young  Captain, 
had  almost  more  than  they  could  do  to  keep 
order  and  still  remain  in  a  posture  of  defense 
against  the  very  real  Indian  enemy  only  thirty 
miles  away 

Amidst  all  of  these  alarms  the  camp  of  the 


CHIEF  UMTUX  87 

Coweliskies  lay  like  a  dark  cloud  under  the  fort, 
portending  danger,  and  many  a  mother  and 
many  a  fighting  man,  looking  at  it  with  appre- 
hension, wished  that  it  might  be  destroyed 
before  it  broke  and  scattered,  carrying  fire  and 
death  with  it. 

While  things  were  in  this  condition  the 
Coweliskies  suddenly  decamped.  In  a  single 
night  their  camp  disappeared  and  in  the  morning 
the  settlers  saw  in  their  fancy  their  worst  fears 
confirmed:  the  Coweliskies  had  gone  on  the 
warpath  and  now  the  Indian  war  was  to  be 
brought  to  their  own  firesides.  The  company 
was  promptly  put  under  arms  and  went  in  pursuit 
and  about  fifteen  miles  Northwest  of  Vancouver 
overtook  the  fugitives.  Great  difficulty  was 
found  in  locating  them  and  still  greater  diffi- 
culty in  finding  out  their  intentions,  whether 
for  war  or  peace.  To  precipitate  a  conflict  by 
striking  the  Indians  unnecessarily  would  in  the 
unprotected  condition  of  the  settlers  have  been 
a  crime,  while  to  let  the  Indians  escape  to  carry 
on  in  unbroken  force  an  Indian  warfare  would 
have  been  worse. 

The  young  Captain  placed  his  little  force 
across  the  path  of  the  Indians  and  went  to  work 
to  develop  the  situation.  Negotiations  were 
entered   into.     The   two    forces   stood   on   their 


88  CATHLAMET 

guard  against  each  other,  but  everything  went 
well,  and  one  evening  the  Indians  finally  prom- 
ised to  return  the  next  morning,  and  for  the 
first  time  for  many  nights  the  young  Captain 
had  rest.  In  that  night  some  lawless  idiot  did 
his  deadly  work,  and  the  next  morning  it  was 
learned  that  Umtux,  the  chief  of  the  Indians, 
lay  dead  between  the  lines.  Who  killed  him  no 
one  knows  or  suspects  to  this  day.  None  of 
the  sentrys  fired  upon  him  and  none  of  his  Indians 
appeared  to  have  had  murder  against  him  in 
their  hearts.  Nevertheless  there  lay  Chief  Umtux 
half  way  between  the  lines  of  his  people  and  the 
lines  of  the  volunteers,  indubitably  very  dead. 
Lying  in  the  trail  by  the  side  of  a  log  with  the 
hole  made  by  a  rifle  bullet  through  him,  Chief 
Umtux  was  more  dangerous  dead  than  living, 
and  instantly  the  battle  lines  were  formed  in  earn- 
est and  for  a  few  hours  Chief  Umtux  lay  upon 
the  crimsoned  soil  of  what  it  seemed  would  at 
last  be  a  genuine  battle-ground  of  Northwestern 
Oregon.  Steadily  the  two  forces  stood  against 
each  other,  but  fortunately  no  other  shot  was 
fired  and  Western  Oregon  was  spared  an  Indian 
war.  A  brave  French  voyageur  volunteered 
to  go  to  the  Indians  and  resume  treaty-making, 
and  taking  his  life  in  his  hands  stood  in  their 
midst.     It  is  told  that  it  was  a  dramatic  scene. 


CHIEF  UMTUX  89 

The  Indians,  half  crazed  with  fear  and  lust  of 
revenge,  stood  about  him.  He  explained  as  he 
best  could  that  the  death  of  Umtux  was  not  the 
act  of  the  soldiery,  but  of  some  lawless  ranger, 
and  that  if  they  would  submit  they  would  be 
protected.  Gradually  with  perfect  skill  and 
fearlessness  he  won  back  their  confidence  and 
obtained  a  renewal  of  their  promise  to  go  back 
to  the  fort.  One  strange  thing  for  Indians, 
they  stipulated  for,  and  that  was  that  the  soldiers 
should  return  and  leave  them  free  for  twenty-four 
hours  to  bury  their  chief  unobserved.  When  this 
condition  was  reported  to  the  young  Captain 
he  was  doubtful.  On  the  one  hand  it  looked 
like  an  Indian  trick  to  escape  without  a  battle, 
while  on  the  other  hand  their  Chief  had  been 
unfairly  killed  and  they  had  a  just  right  to  suspect 
the  good  faith  of  the  w^hite  men. 

After  some  hours  of  consideration  he  accepted 
the  solemn  promise  of  the  Indians  and  marched 
his  men  back  to  the  fort,  leaving  the  Cowel- 
iskies  alone  with  their  dead.  Chief  Umtux 
was  buried  that  night,  but  how  and  where  no 
man  save  his  Indians  ever  knew,  and  they  never 
told.  If  you  will  look  upon  a  map  you  will  see 
a  place  about  twelve  or  fifteen  miles  Northeast 
of  Vancouver  that  bears  to  this  day  the  name 


90  CATHLAMET 

of  ''Battleground."  Near  here  the  Indians 
stood  at  bay,  and  near  here  Umtux  was  buried. 

The  death  of  Umtux  was  a  direct  l)low  at  the 
peace  that  then  prevailed  between  the  Indians 
and  the  white  men  in  Western  Oregon,  and  his 
murder  was  an  act  of  violence  that  disgraces  the 
pioneer  annals  of  Oregon,  ])ut  there  was  more 
to  come,  and  what  happened  afterwards  shows  in 
still  another  light  the  less  noble  side  of  the 
pioneer  character,  for  the  pioneer  men  had  the 
faults  of  their  virtues.  Their  boldness  some- 
times became  temerity,  their  love  of  liberty 
license,  and  their  justice  revenge,  and  the  wife, 
of  the  pioneer  was  like  unto  him. 

When  the  company  came  marching  back  into 
the  fort  without  any  Indians  either  dead  or  alive 
and  without  a  battle  to  report,  excitement  ran 
high  and  when  it  became  known  upon  what 
terms  they  had  allowed  the  Indians  to  remain, 
the  excitement  increased.  There  could  be  no 
talk  of  lynching,  because  the  company  contained 
practicalh^  all  the  fighting  men  of  the  settle- 
ment, so  the  women  with  busy  tongues  took 
the  matter  into  their  own  hands,  and  w^hen  the 
company  were  assembled  appeared  before  it 
and  in  the  presence  of  an  excited  crowd  pre- 
sented to  the  Captain  a  woman^s  red  petticoat 
as  a  banner  for  his  soldiers.     It  was  a  deadly 


CHIEF  UMTUX  91 

insult  and  the  company  quailed  under  it.  For 
a  moment  matters  looked  serious,  and  there 
was  every  prospect  of  a  general  riot  and  a  free 
fight,  but  the  Captain  was  a  man  of  parts  and 
equal  to  the  situation.  With  a  white  face  he 
stepped  forward  and  on  behalf  of  his  company 
accepted  the  gift.  In  a  few  manly  words  he 
told  the  women  and  the  gaping  crowd  that  they 
did  not  know  what  they  did  or  appreciate  the 
reason  for  the  action  of  the  soldiers,  and  assured 
them  that  if  it  should  be  the  good  fortune  of  the 
company  to  be  ordered  to  the  front  that  their 
flag  would  be  carried  into  action,  and  if  so  carried 
would  be  dyed  a  deeper  red  before  it  returned, 
and  then  turning  to  his  company  gave  a  short 
military  command.  There  was  some  hesitation 
in  obeying  it,  and  a  tall,  lanky  fellow  made 
some  insolent  remark  and  drew  a  bowie  knife. 
That  was  enough,  and  with  joy  in  his  heart  that 
his  wrath  could  be  unloosed  and  that  he  had 
somebody  besides  women  to  expend  his  anger 
upon,  in  one  bound  the  Captain  was  upon  him. 
The  man  made  one  ineffectual  stroke  with  his 
knife,  and  ever  after  one  side  of  the  Captain^s 
mouth,  where  the  knife  cut  in,  drooped  under 
his  moustache  a  little  more  than  the  other,  and 
then  the  man  weAt  down  helpless  as  a  child 
in  a  grasp   that  threatened   to   choke  out  life. 


92  CATHLAMET 

The  Captain  always  afterwards  cheerfully  in- 
sisted that  he  was  only  maintaining  military 
discipline,  and  would  not  have  killed  the  man, 
but  the  men  of  his  company,  in  telling  of  the 
affair,  claimed  that  they  saved  the  fellow's  life 
only  by  pulling  the  Captain  off.  The  Captain 
stood  six  feet  two  inches  in  his  stockings  and  had 
had  provocation  that  would  have  angered  an 
angel,  so  perhaps  the  truth  was  with  the  rank 
and  file. 

The  next  day,  true  to  their  appointment,  the 
Coweliskies  came  marching  in  and  put  them- 
selves under  the  protection  of  the  white  Captain, 
and  the  women  with  one  of  those  swift  revulsions 
of  feeling  that  follow  so  fast  after  heedless  action, 
were  profuse  in  their  apologies  and  wanted  to 
take  back  their  flag,  besides  the  woman  who 
had  lent  the  petticoat  wanted  it  ]:)ack  for  personal 
reasons,  for  petticoats  were  short  in  more  ways 
than  one  in  those  days,  but  no,  the  members  of 
the  company  were  obdurate.  The  petticoat  had 
been  given  to  them  and  their  flag  it  would 
remain. 

The  Coweliskies  made  no  more  trouble.  The 
Indian  war  rolled  Eastward  back  from  the  gates 
of  the  Cascades.  The  settlers  went  home  and 
confidence  was  restored.  Then  the  company 
was   disbanded,    taking   back   with   it   only   the 


CHIEF  UMTUX  93 

satisfaction  of  knowing  that  it  had  done  its 
duty  and  that  it  had  been  the  only  military 
command  of  the  war  that  had  been  presented 
with    a    l^anner. 

The  Coweliskies  in  their  squalor  were  but  a 
poor  and  far  away  imitation  of  the  angels  that 
buried  the  great  law  giver,  yet  their  work  abides, 
for  of  Umtux  it  is  true  ''that  no  man  knoweth 
of  his  sepulchre  unto  this  day.'' 


XVI. 

HAPPY  DAYS 

rpHERE  were  few  more  joyful  or  animated 
-*-  sights  than  a  lodge  or  hunting  party  of 
Indians  in  good  luck.  The  Indian  bucks  sitting 
around  smoking  or  gambling,  the  Indian  women 
bysy  in  preserving  fish  and  meat  and  preparing 
skins,  and  the  funny  little  children  and  the  dogs, 
a  mingled,  whooping,  joyful  mass,  eating,  sleep- 
ing and  i:)laying  all  day  long.  Even  the  little 
baby  with  his  tightly  bound  head  and  body 
strapped  to  a  board  hung  up  against  a  tree, 
looked  around  with  his  little  beady  eyes  in 
contented  amusement,  and  unless  frightened 
never  cried. 

Amongst  themselves  or  with  their  intimate 
friends  they  were  not  at  all  reserved,  but  joked 
and  told  stories  with  the  utmost  freedom. 
Man}^  of  these  stories,  told  in  the  open  lodge 
before  the  women  and  children,  would  not  bear 
repeating,  could  not  well  i)ass  inspection  for 
the    Government    mail. 

As  the  lingering  remnant  of  this  people 
approached  the  end,  on  one  conspicuous  occasion 

94 


HAPPY  DAYS  95 

Providence  threw  a  broad  gleam  of  sunshine 
over  their  path  and  made  all  of  them  rich  beyond 
the  utmost  dreams  of  Indian  avarice.  In  1861 
came  a  day  when  the  snows  gathered  and 
the  rains  fell.  The  Clackamas,  Molalla,  San- 
tiam,  and  McKenzie,  the  Long  Tom,  Rickreall, 
Yamhill  and  Tualatin  poured  their  crowded 
waters  into  the  Willamette  River  and  swept  it 
with  a  great  flood  from  end  to  end.  Linn  City, 
opposite  Oregon  City,  was  swept  away  to  the 
bedrock,  and  flouring  mills,  saw  mills,  ware- 
houses, wharves,  stores  and  houses  from  all 
along  the  river  went  floating  to  the  sea  in  a  mass. 
The  Columbia  River  at  Cathlamet  was  covered 
for  days  with  lumber,  flour,  furniture  and  prop- 
erty of  every  description,  and  the  tides  there 
made  salvage  easy.  Every  Indian  and  every 
canoe  along  the  river  was  busy.  Flour  was 
the  principal  thing  saved.  This  wets  in  onls' 
about  half  an  inch,  and  remains  just  as  good  as 
ever  inside.  In  front  of  the  Quillis  lodge  was 
ranged  a  great  pile  of  flour  sacks,  food  enough 
for  years.  Lumber  was  brought  ashore  in  any 
quantity  that  was  wanted.  The  Indians  even 
tied  up  a  whole  wharf  and  warehouse  in  one  of 
the  sloughs  below  the  town.  They  saved  fur- 
niture and  clothing  and  crockery,  everything 
that    an    Indian    could    ask    for.     Incalculable 


96  CATHLAMET 

wealth  rolled  along  for  days  on  the  river  and 
the  Indians  were  free  to  pick  and  choose.  The 
little  Indians  whooped  along  the  bank  with  their 
loose,  single  shirt  half  the  time  over  their  heads 
and  never  covering  their  nakedness. 

''Nanich!  nanich!"  (see!  see!)  they  shouted, 
and  "Hiyu  supalil!  hiyu  supalil!"  (plenty  bread! 
plenty  bread!)  dancing  up  and  down  in  their 
excitement  and  occasionalh'  making  a  wild 
plunge  towards  the  river  to  save  some  article 
that  floated  near  shore,  occasionally,  too,  falling 
in  and  being  pulled  out  and  slapped  O^y  the 
watchful,  excited  mothers. 

It  was  almost  incredible  what  came  down 
the  river.  There  was  no  rattlesnake  country 
within  150  miles,  and  j^t  an  old  log  house  came 
floating  by  alive  with  rattlesnakes.  Bales  of 
hay  floated  by  with  crowing  chickens.  One 
young  Indian  attracted  by  the  neat  look  of 
some  white  painted  beehives  that  came  floating 
by  on  the  platform  of  an  old  outhouse,  took 
one  aboard  his  canoe.  A  moment  after  he 
went  howling  overboard,  and  when  he  was 
pulled  ashore  and  emptied  of  the  water  that 
had  poured  into  him,  expressed  his  opinion 
of  the  white  people  who  put  up  hornets  in  white 
boxes  in  unvarnished  terms.  ''Hivu  Mesatchie/' 
and  then,  as  the  Indian  vocabulary  failed,  ''D — n 


HAPPY  DAYS  97 

Mesatchie."  As  for  the  beehive  and  the  canoe, 
they  went  sailing  out  over  the  bar,  and  so  far  as 
any  one  knows,  these  bees  are  the  same  ones 
that  are  now  making  the  beeswax  that  washes 
up  every  now  and  then  from  the  Pacific  Ocean. 
It  was  a  gorgeous  time,  and  when  the  flood  of 
wealth  was  over  the  Indians  of  the  lower  river 
were  richer  than  they  had  ever  been  even  in 
their  dreams. 

To  Quillis  and  his  people,  however,  the 
inquiry  that  suggested  itself  to  the  sportsmen 
who  found  four  pounds  of  bread  and  ten  gallons 
of  whisky  in  their  camp  luggage  soon  suggested 
itself,  ''What  did  they  want  so  much  bread  for?" 
A  lot  of  flour  was  promptly  exchanged  for  a 
sixty-gallon  barrel  of  whisky,  and  Ingersoll  never 
sang  the  song  of  the  oaken  barrel  half  as  joyously 
as  the  Indians  did.  It  was  the  last  great  feast 
of  the  Columbia  River  Indians.  Only  one 
thing  marred  its  joyousness  and  this  was  tem- 
porary. Old  Quillis  was  a  wise  old  chap,  and 
as  the  whisky  brightened  up  his  intellect  it 
occurred  to  him  that  the  barrel  of  whisky  would 
last  one  Indian  longer  than  it  would  the  tril)e, 
so  he  cpiietly  stole  the  half  empty  cask  and  hid 
it  in  the  woods,  but  Quillis  sober  could  not 
find  what  Quillis  drunk  had  hidden,  so  after  a 
week   of   antics    that    alarmed    the   rest   of   his 


98  CATHLAMET 

tribe  as  to  his  sanity,  Quillis  called  his  people 
together  and  confessed  his  sin  and  begged  their 
help  in  finding  the  precious  barrel.  After  a 
long  search  enthusiastically  joined  in  by  all  the 
Indians  the  barrel  was  found  and  the  interrupted 
feast   went   on. 

Gradually  the  race  died  out,  ha}))\v  in  the 
Indian  fashion,  and  care-free  to  the  last,  and 
the  survivors  in  the  Willamette  Valley  and  the 
Valley  of  the  Columl)ia  can  now  almost  be 
counted  on  the  fingers.  They  did  not  pass  away 
unnoticed  or  alone.  Other  |)owers  and  noted 
men  tied  to  them  in  the  web  of  fate  passed  away 
with  them.  Great  captains  of  the  imperial 
race  sat  in  their  lodges,  and  a  President,  to  be, 
of  the  United  States,  traveled  in  somewhat 
sorry  state  in  their  canoes,  in  those  last  few 
vears. 


XVII. 
THE  PIONEERS 

NO  PICTURE  of  the  Westorn  Indian  can 
be  complete  without  reference  to  the 
race  that  suppkmted  him  and  the  circumstances 
of  the  contact  of  the  two  races  so  long  as  it 
existed. 

Shuffle  Shoon  and  Am])er  Pocks 
Sit    together    building    Ijlocks, 
Shuffle  Shoon  is  old  and  gray, 
Amber   Locks   a   little   child. 

One   speaks   of   the   long   ago, 
Where  his  dead  hopes  buried  lie. 
One  with  chubby  cheeks  aglow, 
Prattleth  of  the  By  and  By. 

In  1850  there  were  probakly  not  to  exceed 
one  thousand  white  men  in  all  the  vast  district 
lying  North  of  the  Columbia  River.  The  Willam- 
ette Valley  South  of  the  Columbia,  was  compara- 
tively well  settled  with  white  people,  l3ut  from 
Cathlamet  Northward  for  thousands  of  miles 
the  wilderness  lay  unmarked  by  white  men's 
hands.      A    few    hamlets    on     Puget    Sound,    a 


100  CATHLAMET 

house  at  Cathlamet,  another  at  Oak  Point  and 
a  few  others  here  and  there,  with  Fort  Vancouver, 
was    alL 

Cathlamet  was  one  of  the  loneliest  places 
on  the  earth.  Into  its  loneliness  in  1850 
came  a  white  pioneer  and  his  wife,  with  two 
little  l^abies.  A  trail  through  the  woods  was 
made  to  the  point  on  the  river  about  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  below  Mr.  Birnie's,  and  here  a  small 
log  house  was  built  and  occupied. 

It  is  hard  to  conceive  of  the  impulse  or  instinct 
that  brought  two  such  people  into  such  a 
situation.  The  man  was  a  trained  lawyer,  as 
after  events  made  clear,  one  of  the  highest 
types  of  his  profession.  Even  before  he  left  the 
East  his  abilities  were  recognized,  and  he  stood 
on  equal  terms  with  men  who  in  the  stirring 
events  of  the  next  ten  years  were  to  earn  world- 
wide fame.  He  was  a  man  of  culture  and  re- 
finement. At  a  time  when  college  graduates 
were  rarer  than  they  are  now,  he  was  a  graduate 
of  Yale  College,  and  always  bore  about  him  the 
evidence  of  his  training.  Greek  was  familiar 
to  him,  and  Latin  he  could  read  to  the  end  of 
his  days  almost  as  readily  as  he  could  English. 
Not  only  college  bred,  but  a  man  of  wide  and 
choice  reading,  he  made  a  strange  selection  of 
a  place  for  the  exercise  of  his  undoubted  talents 


THE  PIONEERS  101 

and  capal^ilitics,  Init,  strange  a?  was  his  ohoico 
of  a  home,  it  was  a  still  more"  stj:'ai''g.e  h.cMne  \6t 
his  wife,  who  for  some  years  was  the  only  white 
woman  of  Cathlamet. 

A  refined  and  cultivated  young  woman,  thor- 
oughly educated  and  accustomed  to  the  best 
social  circles  of  the  Eastern  States,  with  two 
little  babies,  was  somewhat  out  of  place  in  the 
Cathlamet  of  1850.  The  pioneer  instinct  is 
one  of  the  strangest  instincts  of  a  virile  race, 
and  no  stranger  manifestation  of  it  ever  appeared 
than  this.  In  the  Winter  nights  the  wolves 
howled  within  hearing  of  the  little  log  house, 
and  the  young  women  of  today,  fearful  of  a 
mouse,  would  not  have  thought  it  a  cheerful 
sound.  With  wolves  on  one  side  and  an  Indian 
village  on  the  other,  the  bravest  of  women  might 
have    felt    a    little    timid. 

The  first  few  years  at  Cathlamet  were  years 
of  hardship  for  this  white  family.  The  duties 
of  the  man  compelled  him  to  be  away  from 
home  at  Oregon  City,  Salem  and  other  points 
a  great  portion  of  the  time,  and  his  wife  was 
left  alone  with  her  children. 

His  income  was  ridiculously  small,  and  was 
almost  consumed  in  traveling  and  similar  ex- 
penses, so  that  the  improvement  of  the  place 
grew  very  slowly,  and  household  comforts  were 


102  CATHLAMET 

not  to  be  had,  and  the  surroundings  made  the 
yoimg'wife''s  position  a  very  hard  one. 

One  of  the  peculiarities  of  Indian  life  is  the 
little  apparent  effect  that  an  Indian  village  has 
upon  wild  animals  in  its  proximity.  The  large 
gray  wolf,  the  most  knowing  and  elusive  of 
animals,  will  loiter  around  the  outskirts  of  an 
Indian  village,  and  upon  occasions  will  come  into 
it  almost  as  fearlessly  as  the  native  dogs.  It 
may  be  that  the  wolfish  nature  of  the  Indian  dogs 
invites  such  familiarity,  but  there  is  no  love 
lost  l:)etween  the  wolf  and  the  dog,  and  it  is  not 
uncommon  for  the  wolves  to  kill  and  eat  their 
dog  brethren.  In  Metlakahthi,  a  large  Indian 
village  of  eight  hundred  people,  on  Annette 
Island,  in  Alaska,  two  years  ago,  large  gray  wolves 
came,  even  in  summer  nights,  into  the  heart  of 
the  town,  and  the  shadowy  gray  creatures  were 
frequently  met  with  on  the  streets.  Wolves 
would  not  have  come  within  five  miles  of  a  town 
of   equal    size   of   white    people. 

Wild  animals  fairly  swarmed  about  Cathlamet. 

Every  now  and  then  a  choice  duck  of  the 
tame  flock  would  be  heard  squawking  loudly 
and  seen  progressing  across  the  sloughs  in  a 
direction  in  which  he  evidently  did  not  want  to 
go.  A  cunning  little  mink  had  seized  him  from 
below  and  was  towing  him  off.     Not  a  sign  of 


THE  PIONEERS  103 

the  mink  could  l)c  seen,  and  when  anybody  shot 
at  the  sorrowful  procession  they  generalh^  killed 
the  duck,  and  the  mink  went  free. 

The  family  pi"-,  upon  which  was  centered  many 
hopes,  would  be  feeding  in  a  little  pasture  near 
the  house,  when  a  great  hulking  bear  would  come 
rolling  over  the  fence  and  little  piggy;  with  a 
frantic  squeal  issuing  from  one  end  of  him,  and 
his  curly  tail  twisting  frantically  from  the  other, 
would  disappear  in  the  dark  woods,  never  to 
be  heard  of  more. 

The  cougars  took  toll  from  the  dozens  or  so 
of  sheep  that  were  kept,  and  would  come  into 
the  very  corrals  for  that  purpose. 

As  if  this  were  not  enough,  the  Indian  dogs 
took  a  hand  in  the  sport  and  worried  the  sheep 
wdienever  they  could,  and  nothing  would  persuade 
the  Indians  to  reduce  the  number  of  their  canine 
pests.  The  white  men  formed  an  impromptu 
protective  association,  and  shot  the  dogs  when- 
ever they  could  catch  them,  until  the  dogs  learned 
the  trick  of  running  into  the  lodges  wdienever 
they  saw  a  white  man  around  with  a  gun.  This 
protected  them  for  some  time,  until  the  sheep 
were  nearly  gone,  wdien  something  had  to  be 
done,  and  then  one  of  the  white  men  with  a  rifle 
in  one  hand  for  emergencies,  and  a  Colt's  revolver 
in  the  other  for  dogs,  boldly  went  into  the  lodges 


104  CATHLAMET 

and  shot  the  dogs  there.  It  was  risk}^  work. 
The  inside  of  the  lodge  was  all  smoke  and  con- 
fusion, and  the  children  and  the  Indians  hid 
the  dogs  in  the  beds,  but  canine  curiosity  was  too 
strong,  and  every  now  and  then  a  dog  would 
stick  his  head  out  and  bark.  Crack  would  go 
the  revolver,  half  a  dozen  more  dogs  would  break 
out  simultaneously,  and  it  would  be  bow-wow, 
crack,  crack,  until  the  revolver  was  empty. 
In  this  way  the  dog  pest  was  kept  down  and 
the  sheep  were  given  some  chance  for  their 
lives.  There  was  naturally  a  very  limited 
market,  and  not  much  variety  in  food,  and  salt 
salmon  and  potatoes  grew  tiresome.  The  only 
thing  that  made  living  possible  was  that  wild 
game  was  abundant  and  cheap.  A  few  charges 
of  gunpowder  and  shot  would  l)uy  a  fine  wild 
duck  or  goose,  a  single  charge  of  gunpowder 
would  l3uy  a  forty-pound  salmon,  and  an  Indian 
would  sometimes  come  in  with  his  one-man 
Canoe  loaded  with  wild  fowl,  which  he  would 
sell  for  anything  the  white  people  would  give 
for    them. 

The  family  grew  larger,  and  as  children  were 
born  to  Mrs.  Birnie  and  the  yoimg  white  wife, 
the  white  woman  and  the  red  would  minister  at 
each  other's  bedsides  like  sisters,  and  the  friend- 


THE  PIONEERS'  105 

ships  so  formed  never  failed  or  changed  so  long 
as    the    two    women    lived. 

Occasionally  some  relief  came  to  the  monotony. 
In  1853  a  visit  was  made  to  Fort  Vancouver, 
nearly  a  hundred  miles  away.  To  save  expense 
the  traveling  was  done  in  a  canoe,  with  an 
Indian  crew,  and  as  a  baby  six  months  old 
was  a  necessary  passenger  on  the  journey,  it 
will  be  seen  how  anxious  this  white  woman  was 
to  see  and  talk  with  her  own  people  again. 

During  all  of  this  time  at  Cathlamet  the  Indians 
looked  to  the  white  woman  for  help  in  every 
time  of  trouble.  Was  a  native  baby  sick  the 
white  mother  must  know  some  remedy;  was 
any  Indian  hurt  the  white  woman  in  the  absence 
of  the  white  man  must  do  the  necessary  surgical 
work.  It  was  one  continual  demand,  and  the 
back  porch  of  the  house  was  lined  with  Indians 
almost  every  morning  with  olallies  (berries) 
to  sell,  with  ducks  or  geese  to  dispose  of,  or 
with  some  tale  of  woe  or  sickness  to  tell.  Gen- 
erally one  or  two  Indian  women  were  about  the 
house  helping  in  some  capacity,  and  their  rela- 
tives would  visit  them  as  often  as  they  were 
allowed.  Indian  women  visiting  were  not 
enlivening  creatures.  Coming  in  c[uietly  with 
a  hardly  articulate  ^'klowhiam"  or  good  morning, 
they     would     stand     around,     saying     nothing. 


106  CATHLAMET 

When  pressed  to  stay,  they  would  look  about, 
chatter  a  little  among  themselves,  and  then 
carefully  avoiding  the  chairs,  would  curl  their 
legs  under  them  and  squat  down  on  the  floor. 
Once  there  they  were  fixed  to  stay  until  told  to 
go  home.  The  original  Indian  woman  always 
squatted  on  the  floor  in  preference  to  sitting  on 
anything  higher,  and  always  stayed  until  she 
was  told  it  was  time  to  depart.  She  used  her 
eyes  a  good  deal,  but  her  tongue  very  little. 

As  household  help  the  Indian  girls  were 
quick  to  learn  and  ready  to  work,  but  so  soon 
as  they  were  educated  to  a  point  where  they 
were  useful  and  dressed  nicely  and  kept  clean, 
they  became  so  attractive  that  they  were  married 
out  of  hand.  The  household  help  by  reason  of 
this  was  a  continual  succession  of  Indian 
Lucys,   Margarets,  etc.,  without  number. 


XVIII. 
THE  PIONEER  MOTHER 

WITH  visiting  the  sick,  teaching  the  young 
and  caring  for  her  own  family,  the 
pioneer  mother  had  her  hands  full,  and  of  the 
fruits  of  her  labor  she  saw  but  little.  The 
life  was  terribly  narrow,  but  so  full  of  labor 
and  danger  that  there  was  no  time  to  repine. 
The  coming  of  a  white  man  with  a  white  w^oman 
who  settled  in  the  Elokomon  Valley,  about 
two  miles  back  of  Cathlamet,  was  a  great  event. 
The  low  divide  between  the  Columbia  and 
Elokomon  Rivers  was  covered  at  this  time 
by  a  dense  forest  of  the  spruce  and  Douglas 
fir,  and  so  thick  was  the  growth  that  the  fir 
trees  would  go  up  for  100  feet  without  a  limb, 
and  not  a  ray  of  the  sun  could  reach  the 
ground.  The  trees  grew  very  tall,  and  one  a 
short  way  outside  the  forest  on  the  edge  of  a 
little  prairie  being  measured  with  instruments, 
was  found  to  be  about  308  feet  in  height.  An 
almost  obliterated  Indian  trail  went  over  the 
divide  between  the  rivers,  and  so  anxious  were 
the  white  women  to  see  each  other  that  it  was 

107 


108  CATHLAMET 

a  very  common  thing  for  them  to  go  over  it. 
One  hundred  yards  up  the  trail  there  was  nothing 
to  see  but  trees,  and  one  mile  in  the  woods  was 
as  far  away  from  human  help  as  the  wilds  of 
Siberia.  One  day  when  one  of  them  with  two 
of  her  little  boys  was  on  the  trail  in  the  midst 
of  the  woods  a  large  cougar  suddenly  appeared 
in  it  not  forty  yards  away  and  stood  looking  at 
her.  Now  the  cougar  is  an  uncanny  l^east,  and 
in  these  Northern  woods,  a  most  formidable 
one.  A  man  can  live  in  the  woods  for  years 
and  never  see  one,  and  yet  some  day  the  supple 
yellow  panther  will  stand  in  front  of  him  on  some 
woodland  path  as  though  he  had  come  there 
by  magic.  Not  a  footfall  or  sound  of  breaking 
twig  will  give  any  warning  of  his  coming.  He 
will  simply  be  there,  it  is  a  trick  of  his,  and  he 
always  takes  the  same  position,  calmly  looking 
at  you  without  curiosity  and  without  fear,  A^ery 
rarely  if  ever  crouching,  and  growling,  if  at  all,  in 
a  gentle,  sing-song  drawl,  more  like  purring  than 
anything  else.  With  low  flattened  head,  the  lit- 
tle ears  drawn  back,  softly  poised  on  sinewy, 
tawny  legs  and  velvet  pads,  and  with  the  long 
sweeping  tail  gently  going  from  right  to  left  and 
left  to  right  with  a  CjuiSt,  stead}^  motion,  the 
cougar  when  he  steps  out  of  obscurity  into  the 
open  to  observe  man,  is  an  impressive  creature. 


THE  PIONEER  MOTHER  109 

An  armed  man  stops  to  consider  a  moment  before 
he  fires,  and  an  unarmed  man  has  a  very  lively 
desire  to  be  somewhere  else.  Only  in  the  woods 
can  you  see  a  cougar  so,  and  it  is  not  a  pleasant 
sight  for  a  woman  with  empty  hands. 

There  was  one  best  thing  to  do,  and,  prompted 
by  the  mother's  instinct,  this  mother  did  it. 
Taking  one  child  by  each  hand  and  drawing 
them  close  u])  to  her,  so  as  to  present  a  united 
front,  she  calmly  looked  the  beast  in  the  eyes 
and  slowly  and  steadily  moA^ed  towards  him. 
She  said  it  was  the  only  thing  that  she  could  do. 
The  grim  lips  curled  back  a  little,  and  the  white 
teeth  showed;  but  few  animals  unwounded  can 
face  man,  and,  retiring  step  by  step,  the  cougar 
moved  back  before  her,  and  gliding  into  the 
brush,  disappeared.  An  Indian  woman  would 
have  stood  in  her  place  and  gathering  her  chil- 
dren under  her  blanket,  would  have  waited  the 
issue  in  patience,  and  if  forced  into  a  fight, 
would  have  made  a  l^etter  one  than  the  white 
woman;  but  steadily  moving  up  into  the  face  of 
the  enemy  was  the  English  blood,  and  for  cold- 
blooded courage  when  courage  was  necessary, 
the  white  woman  was  the  superior  of  her  red 
sister. 

This  was  only  one  of  many  anxieties  and 
perils. ,  With  so  many  burdens  the  children  had 


110  CATHLAMET 

largely  to  take  care  of  themselves,  and  one  day 
a  two-year-old  boy  being  missing,  a  search  was 
instituted  and  the  youngster  was  found  floating 
in  an  eddy  of  the  Columbia  River,  quietly  cling- 
ing to  a  little  piece  of  driftwood.  He  had  fallen 
over  a  rocky  cliff  about  eight  feet  high  into  the 
river,  and  had  found  a  natural  life-preserver  in 
the  tiny  piece  of  wood  just  at  hand.  Indian 
Margaret  was  the  nurse  then,  and  she  quietly 
stripped  herself,  swam  out  like  a  duck  and  towed 
the  baby  in.  Except  for  that  friendly  piece  of 
driftwood  and  Indian  Margaret,  this  little  narra- 
tive would  never  have  been  written. 

Another  time  of  extreme  anxiety  was  when 
the  Indians  had  procured  large  supplies  of  licpior. 
A  frightful  hubbub  would  prevail  in  the  Indian 
village,  and  as  this  was  directly  between  the 
Strong  and  Birnie  houses,  it  made  a  fearsome 
situation.  The  Indians,  harmless  enough  at 
ordinary  times,  were  liable  to  be  dangerous  when 
drunk,  and  more  than  once  the  children  were 
chased  home  by  drunken  Indians  with  drawn 
knives.  It  was  perhaps  a  drunken  joke, 
but  if  so,  the  joking  was  on  a  very  serious  sub- 
ject, and  a  white-faced  little  woman  barring  her 
doors  and  windows  with  only  her  small  children 
within,  had  no  enjoyment  of  the  situation. 


XIX. 

THE  RED  BOX 

THE  Indian"  War  of  1855-56  l^rought  great 
anxiety  to  Cathlamet.  There  were  a  few 
more  white  men  there  then,  but  the  preponder- 
ance of  the  Indian  was  still  overwhelming,  and 
when  it  became  whispered  al^oiit  that  the  Klikitat 
Chief  Kamiakin,  the  head  and  front  of  the  war, 
had  messengers  at  Cathlamet,  there  was  fear 
everywhere,  but  the  native  Indians  stood  up 
manfully  for  their  white  friends,  who  had  helped 
them,  and  Mrs.  Birnie  and  her  husband  held 
them  with  a  steady  hand.  Here  was  one  of 
the  great  advantages  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  men 
of  having  Indian  wives.  No  plotting  could  go 
on  without  their  knowledge,  and  in  a  time  of 
stress  the  Indian  wife  could  always  be  relied 
on.  No  white  person  saw  the  messengers  or 
knew  who  they  were,  but  that  they  came  was 
certain.  Across  the  little  creek  in  a  small  pasture 
stood  two  tall  spruce  trees,  and  at  the  top  of 
one  of  these,  placed  on  a  limb  trimmed  off  for 
the  purpose,  suddenly  appeared  a  large  box, 
red  as  blood.  There  it  remained  for  months, 
111 


112  CATHLAMET 

and  even  years,  and  was  said  to  be  Kamiakin's 
signal  to  war,  but  no  white  man  knew  how  it 
got  there  or  what  its  message  was. 

One  explanation  of  its  presence  only  deepens 
the  mystery.  If  an  Indian  killed  another  he 
would,  so  it  is  claimed,  procure  a  small  box, 
paint  it  a  brilliant  red  and  attach  it  to  a  limb 
high  upon  some  conspicuous  tree,  cutting  close 
to  the  trunk  all  the  limbs  below  it,  and  it  is  said 
that  this  in  some  strange  way  showed  repent- 
ance for  the  crime  and  amounted  to  a  punish- 
ment because  the  life  of  the  murderer  would  only 
last  so  long  as  the  box  remained  secure  in  its 
high  place.  As  the  l)ox  was  generally  very  se- 
curely attached  the  murderer's  life  was  quite 
safe  for  many  years,  and  no  other  Indian  would 
meddle  with  it.  This  particular  red  box  that 
appeared  so  m3^steriously  at  Cathlamet  in  the 
time  of  Kamiakin's  war  was,  it  is  claimed,  placed 
there  by  a  son  of  the  Chief  of  the  Skookum 
Tillicums  (Strong  People),  who  had  murdered  a 
fellow-Indian  and  was  intended  by  him  as  a 
public  confession  of  guilt  and  an  expiatory  sacri- 
fice. Be  this  as  it  ma}^,  the  mere  suggestion 
opens  up  many  strange  phases  of  the  Indian 
character.  No  Indian  ever  openly  humiliated 
himself,  and  if  such  a  custom  prevailed  the  ele- 
vation of  the  red  box  was  made  more  in  pride 


THE  RED  BOX  113 

than  in  humility.  ''I  have  slain''  it  said,  and 
no  ordinary  Indian  had  much  compunction  in 
this  or  thought  it  lowered  him  in  the  estimation 
of    his  fellows. 

If  the  young  Skookum  Tillicum  hoisted  such 
a  signal  in  the  feverish  times  of  a  general  war 
and  the  settlers  had  known  that  he  was  boasting 
of  an  accomplished  murder  it  is  more  than  likely 
that  they  would  have  taken  it  for  granted  that 
his  message  was,  ''I  have  slain,  I  have  slain.  Go 
thou  and  do  likewise,"  and  would  i:)robably  have 
promptly  disposed  of  young  Skookum  Tillicum. 

This  strange  red  box  might  well  therefore 
have  been  a  confession,  a  boast  and  a  call  to 
war  all  in  one,  and  people  as  quick  as  are  the 
Indians  in  interpreting  signs  would  very  easily 
have  known  its  deeper  import,  although  they 
might  not  tell  it  to  their  white  neighbors. 

The  red  box  raised  high  upon  the  tree  did  not 
add  any  to  the  comfort  or  feeling  of  security  of 
the  few  white  people  that  lived  at  Cathlamet. 

From  1850  to  1862  the  pioneer  life  of  Cathlamet 
went  on,  the  white  population  steadily  increasing 
and  the  red  as  steadily  diminishing. 

The  order  of  burial  of  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer  was  continually  in  use  and  was  read  over 
many  lonely  little  graves,  every  trace  of  which 
has  since  been  swept  away.     One  of  the  saddest 


114  CATHLAMET 

of  these  burials  was  that  of  Indian  George,  a 
young  Indian  of  sixteen.  He  had  been  a  slave  of 
the  Tsimpseans,  Northern  Indians,  from  Fort 
Simpson,  and  on  one  of  their  insolent  war  excur- 
sions into  Puget  Sound  Judge  Strong  saw  him, 
and,  moved  with  pity  at  his  deplorable  condition, 
bought  him  for  two  dollars  and  fifty  cents 
worth  of  goods  and  brought  him  to  Cathlamet. 
Here  he  grew  up  in  the  household  into  a  strong, 
happy  boy,  but  every  now  and  then  the  wild 
instinct  would  come  upon  him  and  he  would 
run  away.  Nothing  would  l)e  done  to  reclaim 
him,  and  in  a  few  weeks  he  would  return, 
ragged  and  thin,  but  very  happy  to  get  l^ack. 
Nothing  pleased  him  so  much  as  to  salute  the 
little  steamboats  that  used  to  come  monthly 
from  San  Francisco  by  dipping  to  them  a 
little  home-made  American  flag,  and  when  he 
lay  dying  of  consumption  his  every  wish  was 
gratified  by  the  promise  that  he  should  be 
buried  shrouded  in  it. 


XX. 

THE  END 

THE  earlier  Cathlamet  life  was  sometimes 
enlivened  by  the  visits  of  strangers,  and 
one  of  these  is  worthy  of  remembrance.  Half 
way  between  the  Hudson's  Bay  store  and  the 
Strong  house  was  a  little  cove  in  the  low,  rocky 
bank  before  w^hich,  in  high  tide,  floated  the  Indian 
canoes  and  behind  which  was  the  Indian  lodges. 
An  old  logging  railway  and  cannery  wharves 
now  hide  it  almost  from  sight,  l^ut  it  was  in  this 
early  day  the  principal  landing  place  for  the 
Indian  village  and  here  in  times  past  McLoughlin, 
McDougall,  McTavish  and  many  other  notal^les 
had  landed. 

In  the  Fall  of  1852  a  canoe  turned  in  to  the 
landing  from  the  Columbia  River,  and  in  it  were 
an  Indian  crew  and  a  rather  short  young  man 
of  pink  and  white  complexion,  evidently  one  of 
the  new  United  States  officers  at  Fort  Vancouver. 
He  was  a  stranger  in  the  country  and  was  on  a 
trip  to  Shoalwater  Bay  and  very  anxious  to  get 
some  white  man  to  go  on  with  him.  He  stayed 
at   the   Strong    house   for  several   days   and   so 

115 


116  CATHLAMET 

prevailed  upon  his  host  that  at  the  end  of  his 
visit  they  went  off  together  to  the  bay.  No 
record  of  this  trip  exists,  and  no  official  report 
of  it  was  ever  made.  The  Indians  were  reticent 
in  regard  to  it,  and  all  the  two  men  vouchsafed 
to  say  was  that  they  had  had  a  jolly  good  time 
and  would  have  stayed  longer  had  the  provisions 
held  out.  Twice  again  the  young  officer  came 
to  Cathlamet  a  welcome  guest,  and  then  his 
short  stay  of  a  year  in  this  country  being 
finished,  went  away  to  the  career  that  time 
had  in  store  for  him,  and  a  marvelous  career 
it  was,  for  it  was  written  in  the  book  of  fate 
that  this  ol)scure  young  Captain  Grant  should 
command  the  armies  of  the  great  Republic  in 
the  mightiest  war  of  modern  times,  that 
he  should  sit  as  a  ruler  of  the  Nation  and 
should  finally  sleep  in  that  great  tomb  that 
looks  down  upon  the  Hudson.  It  was  fated 
that  both  host  and  guest  should  sleep  at  last  at 
two  Riversides  far  apart,  one  in  his  stately 
tomb  by  the  Hudson,  and  the  other  under  the 
trees  and  grass  by  the  dark  forest  he  loved  so 
well,  looking  down  upon  the  Willamette.  One 
rendered  a  great  service  to  his  country  in  its 
time  of  need  and  met  with  ciuick  and  great  re- 
ward; the  other  at  the  fountain  head  of  the 
history    of    a    great    commonwealth,    after    the 


THE  END  117 

fashion  of  the  pioneers,  expended  his  life  and 
strength  for  a  coming  people  and  gave  of  the  best 
that  was  in  him  for  future  generations. 

Another  visitor  was  a  dashing  young  fellow 
from  New  York  who  entered  into  wilderness 
life  with  a  zest.  For  the  few  years  he  was  here 
his  adventures  were  numberless.  When  as 
clerk  of  the  court  in  some  fiercely  contested 
murder  or  other  case  he  carelessly  unslung  his 
revolver  and  sat  at  his  desk  with  it  lying  on  the 
table  before  him,  there  was  order  in  the 
court,  for  everybody  knew  what  he  could  do 
with  firearms.  Only  once  did  the  wilderness 
get  the  advantage  of  him,  and  then  he  owed  his 
life  to  the  friendly  service  of  an  Indian.  While 
surveying  a  road  from  Cathlamet  Northward 
to  the  Boisfort  Prairie,  with  the  idea  of  extending 
it  to  Puget  Sound,  he  was,  when  a  little  away 
from  the  party,  suddenly  charged  upon  by  an 
enraged  elk.  Being  without  weapons,  he  dived 
for  the  first  place  of  shelter  at  hand,  which  hap- 
pened to  be  a  small  fallen  tree  lying  about  two 
feet  above  the  ground.  The  elk  would  furiously 
strike  at  him  with  hoofs  and  horns  on  one  side, 
and  would  then  jump  over  and  strike  at  him 
from  the  other,  and  the  only  way  to  avoid  the 
savage  animal  was  to  keep  up  a  very  alert  dodg- 
ing under  the  tree  from  side  to  side.     This  game 


118  CATHLAMET 

of  hide  and  seek  went  on  for  several  hours  until 
the  man  was  nearly  worn  out,  the  elk  growing 
more  and  more  active  and  his  eyes  growing 
greener  and  more  furious,  as  their  manner  is 
when  balked,  until  an  Indian  coming  up  shot 
him  and  allowed  a  very  tired,  dirty  and  hum- 
bled young  man  to  limp  Imck  to  camp.  It  was 
written  for  this  young  man  that  he,  too,  should 
serve  his  country  in  the  Civil  War,  Imt  that  less 
fortunate  than  some  of  his  comrades  he  should 
fall  in  battle  at  the  head  of  his  brigade,  crippled 
for  life  by  a  shot  through  the  hips. 

As  a  white-haired  old  General  he  now  walks 
haltingly  in  his  vineyard  in  California,  and  thinks 
often  of  early  Oregon  and  of  the  days  when  "all 
the  world  was  young.  ^' 

About  the  time  of  the  great  flood  of  1861  came 
one  of  the  coldest  Winters  ever  known  in  Oregon, 
the  Winter  of  1861-62.  Ice  rarely  forms  at 
Cathlamet,  but  that  Winter  the  water  along  the 
shores  of  the  Columbia  was  frozen  so  solidly 
that  horses  and  sleds  Avere  used  on  it, and  snow 
fell  and  remained  on  the  ground  to  the  depth  of 
three  feet.  The  little  steamer  Multnomah,  with 
genial  Captain  Hoyt  as  master,  was  frozen  in  at 
Cathlamet,  and  so  w^ere  quite  a  number  of  other 
people.  There  is  at  least  one  staid,  elderly 
woman  of  Portland  who  will  remember  the  gay 


THE  END  119 

carnival  of  that  Winter  in  the  white  and  Indian 
town  of  Cathlamet.  The  Indians  had  plenty  of 
food  and  clothing  and  were  happy.  The  whites 
were  jolly,  as  pioneers  always  were  if  they  had 
half  a  chance.  The  six  weeks  of  freezing  weather 
was  filled  in  with  sleigh-riding,  games  and  dancing 
and  from  the  hills  of  Cathlamet  to  the  Columbia 
River  the-  men,  l)oys  and  women,  white  and 
Indian,  coasted  continually.  Food  with  the 
white  people  grew  scanty,  but  this  made  no 
difference,  and  a  fine  young  horse  was  shot  for 
meat  and  served  on  the  tables  as  roast  beef. 
In  the  log  houses  and  the  lodges  great  fires 
blazed  and  there  was  nothing  of  sorrow  or  fear, 
and  so  we  end  the  story,  for  here  Cathlamet 
ceases  to  be  Indian  Cathlamet,  and  became 
from  this  time  on  a  town  of  the  ''Bostons." 


^ 


7  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

AMTH?lD?OLOGY  LIBRARY 

ThirpuMicatiSA  1^  due  on  the  LAST  DATE 
stamped  below. 

"6    'Ra.i-, 

FEL  3     19f 

,;7   -65-7 

t 

LOAN 

!  "■■ '.}  C 

JUN  1 8 1980 

1 

: 

---s-i-         u„.^igs„.   ^ 

